The technology is in place to enable us to charge our phones by simply sitting on them. By utilising the body’s natural heat, the Power Felt can transform this energy into an electrical charge needed to boost a phone battery.

The technology is the brainwave of an 11-year-old-girl. Well, she and her professor father - who just so happens to be the Director for the Center of Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials.

The Power Felt is a thermoelectric device that can attach itself to the back of a smartphone. It’s embedded with carbon nanotubes that are locked up in flexible plastic fibres. So flexible in fact that you can hammer a nail through the material and it will still be able to transfer heat into an electrical charge.

 

Though the Power Felt is not yet in mass production, creator David Carroll (he with the equally clever daughter) says the low cost of manufacture coupled with the fact that it can be used anywhere at anytime (it doesn’t rely on sunlight, for example) makes it a truly viable option for charging your phone.

The Power Felt was demoed at Intel’s Science and Engineering Fair, where another innovative inventor created a hiking boot that could charge a smartphone for every 1,000 steps taken. 

Recently we came across another method of charging your smartphone using a tea candle, but the Power Felt might just shade it for ingenuity. Well that and the fact you can charge it while sitting down too.

Do you see the Power Felt taking off? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.