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the ETH Zurich researchers have shown wooden floors can harvest enough energy by just walking on them.

Researchers have developed functionalized wood triboelectric nanogenerators that generate electricity from our footfalls. The team transformed wood into a nanogenerator by sandwiching two pieces of functionalized wood between electrodes. They also improved the wood used in their nanogenerator with a combination of a silicone coating and embedded nanocrystals.

However, there is one problem in making a nanogenerator out of wood. “Wood is basically triboneutral,” says senior author Guido Panzarasa. “It means that wood has no real tendency to acquire or to lose electrons.” This limits the material’s ability to generate electricity, “so the challenge is making wood that is able to attract and lose electrons.“

To overcome this problem, the team coated one piece of the wood with silicone that readily gains electrons upon contact and embedded the other piece with metal ions and organic molecules that give it a higher tendency to lose electrons.