We’ve all heard of kinetic-powered wristwatches, where the motion of the wearer’s arm turning a rotating weight powers the watch without ever requiring winding or a battery change. Now Idaho-based M2E Power takes this idea to a whole new level. They claim to have designed an external charger designed to charge cell phone batteries and boast a 300% – 700% increase in efficiency when compared with existing technologies. Hopefully these will replace cell phone batteries all together! Imagine a cell phone that will be fully charged just by keeping it in your pocket all day or shaking it about. I really hope this becomes a reality soon.
The technology works on Faraday’s principle, which generates electricity by moving a magnet through a metal coil. As you can see from the figure, each battery has a magnet and coil apparatus which functions as the charging unit for the cells. The rest of the battery appears to be similar to a traditional lithium battery where current is stored within a lithium polymer.
The battery won’t be on sale until 2009, as the company is working on products specifically designed for the military, but I’m sure we’ll all be waiting with bated breath when these supercool chargers hit the market!
via: Inhabitat
