E-paper displays like Kindles use such an extremely low amount of power that just brushing your hand across their surfaces could be enough to power them in the future, according to a GigaOM (San Francisco, Calif., USA) article this week by Signe Brewster. A Disney Research team, Brewster reports, has developed flat, flexible power generators that can be incorporated into sheets of paper, plastic, or other common materials, allowing people to generate electricity in novel ways.
 

The team sandwiched materials such as Teflon between sheets of another conductive material. When rubbed, the materials generate an electric current that can power an electronic device.

The article quoted Interaction Group Director Ivan Poupyrev on the potential for this phenomenon. "Though the fundamental principles of operation remain the same, it's possible to build paper generators that respond to a number of different gestures, such as tapping, touching, rubbing, or sliding. We can imagine any number of ways to use this to add sights, sounds, and other interactivity to books and other printed materials inexpensively and without having to worry about power sources."

The devices can be built in less than five minutes, the article notes. A regular printer can be loaded with conductive ink, allowing it to print out the sheets of conductive material. They generate a very low amount of power, which means they are only suited to low-power devices.

"It's very simple, it's flexible, and it's printable using conventional printers," Disney team member Mustafa Karagozler explained in the article. "It's a technology with potential applications we've only begun to explore."