Using the new material, the heat from a hot stove, coupled with the cooler water or food in a cooking pot, could generate enough electricity to charge a cellphone. (Image courtesy of Ashutosh Tiwari.)

Thanks to the discovery of a new material, a piece of jewelry and your body heat could generate enough electricity to power a body sensor, or a cooking pan could charge a cellphone in just a few hours.

The team, led by University of Utah materials science and engineering professor Ashutosh Tiwari, has found that a combination of calcium, cobalt and terbium can create an efficient, inexpensive and bio-friendly material that can generate electricity via thermoelectric processes.

Their findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports. The first author on the paper is University of Utah materials science and engineering postdoctoral researcher, Shrikant Saini.

When one end of the material is hot and the other end is cold, charge carriers from the hot end move through the material to the cold end, generating an electrical voltage. The material needs less than a one-degree difference in temperature to produce a detectable voltage.

For years, researchers have been looking for the right kind of material that makes the process more efficient and produces more electricity while being non-toxic. There are other materials that can generate power this way, such as cadmium-, telluride- or mercury-based materials, but those are toxic to humans. The unique advantage to this new material by Tiwari's team is that it is inexpensive to produce and bio- and eco-friendly while still being efficient at generating electricity.

The new material has many potential applications, according to Tiwari. It could be used to make jewelry that utilizes body heat to power implanted medical devices such as blood-glucose monitors or heart monitors. It could be used to charge mobile devices through cooking pans. Airplanes could generate extra power by using heat from within the cabin versus the cold air outside. Power plants also could use the material to produce more electricity from the escaped heat the plant generates.

"In power plants, about 60 percent of energy is wasted," Saini said. "With this, you could reuse some of that 60 percent."

Finally, Tiwari says it could be used in developing countries where electricity is scarce and the only source of energy is the fire in stoves.

The Technology & Venture Commercialization Office of the University of Utah has filed a U.S. patent for the material, and the team will initially develop it for use in cars and for biosensors, Tiwari said.

For more materials news, learn about Making Super-Hard Windows from Nanoceramics.