{"id":38084,"date":"2014-07-30T11:25:58","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T16:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=38084"},"modified":"2014-07-30T11:25:58","modified_gmt":"2014-07-30T16:25:58","slug":"honey-i-shrunk-the-windmills-to-the-size-of-an-ant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/07\/30\/honey-i-shrunk-the-windmills-to-the-size-of-an-ant\/","title":{"rendered":"Honey, I Shrunk The Windmills! To The Size Of An Ant"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"One<\/a>

<\/p>

One of the micro-windmills placed on a penny. UT Arlington<\/p><\/div>\n

From KERA News Breakthroughs:<\/a><\/em><\/h4>\n

Commercial wind turbines stand more than a hundred feet tall, with blades nearly as long. The wind turbines developed by engineers at the University of Texas at Arlington are a bit smaller\u2026\u00a0just half than the size of an ant.<\/p>\n

In a cold lab room at\u00a0UT Arlington<\/a>\u00a0electrical engineering professor\u00a0J.C. Chiao<\/a>\u00a0shows off a windmill. It\u2019s mounted on a grain of white rice. The micro windmill is a tiny speck of metal with a rectangular base and three shiny blades the size of ant antenna.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust think about it this way,\u201d Chiao says, \u201cMy interest and research focus is to shrink things.\u201d<\/p>\n\nhttps:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/07\/Mini-Windmills-UTA-mp3.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

The windmills aren\u2019t for a science fiction project. They\u2019re meant to harvest wind energy and deliver small bursts of energy to compact devices like remote sensors or cell phones.<\/p>\n

Wind Power For Your Cell Phone<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"UT<\/a>

UT Arlington<\/p>

UT Arlington Research Associate Smitha Rao<\/p><\/div>\n

Smitha Rao<\/a>, a university research associate at UT Arlington, came up with the design for the tiny turbines.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe visualized that we could have a panel of these outside to power your outdoor lighting,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The idea developed as Rao and Chiao talked, and Rao says her enthusiasm gave Chiao another idea:<\/p>\n

\u201cI was waving my hands and Dr. Chiao was like guess what else you could use it for? To charge your cell phone!\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right, a sleeve connected to your phone\u2019s battery would have the windmills mounted on top.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo theoretically if you wave your hand enough you should be able to generate enough power to send that one important text message,\u201d Rao says.<\/p>\n

Different Design Challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n

Creating windmills with parts a fraction of the diameter of a human hair was a real challenge.<\/p>\n

Rao says at first the blades just weren\u2019t spinning with her original flat design.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when she notice something about her daughter\u2019s pinwheel one evening.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized it had this curved structure that made it rotate much faster,\u201d Rao says. \u201cEven when she was barely waving it and I said that\u2019s what I need to do \u2013 I need to create that artificial curvature on the blades to make it move faster.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem was in trying to create that curvature at such a small level from two-dimensional metal pieces.<\/p>\n

So Rao worked with a Taiwanese electro-mechanical fabrication company on a new layering process. The result are blades that aren\u2019t exactly curved, but have a step-like structure that appears smooth and helps with rotation.<\/p>\n