It seems that there is always a new twist to the cell phone generation, with new technologies cropping up at lightning speed to enhance our cell phone experience. One thing that will never change with the cell phone however is the fact that they need juicing up on a regular basis, or no matter how technologically advanced they are, they are useless. But even this operation of powering up the cell phone seems to be advancing. We have seen solar powered charges in the past, or emergency AA battery powered chargers that give cell phones some juice when an emergency arises, but wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easier way? It sounds like there might be, as some researchers at the University of Houston are suggesting that with the use of piezoelectricity, a mechanical force that gets converted to electricity, one can power up their cell phones with the use of their own voice.

A specific size of crystal or ceramic material could become a power cell for a mobile device, and the sound waves for our own voice could be the spark that powers it. Some of the power generating crystals would have to be very small, only 23 nanometers wide. To put this into scale, a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers thick. Something this tiny is very difficult to perfect, so the technology is still being worked on. However, cell phones that could be run by voice power alone would certainly save a lot of the world’s overall energy use. I mean, consider the teenaged demographic alone!

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