IMAGINE how much energy we could save if the waste heat produced by the
countless machines we use could be converted into electricity. Well, it’s no
longer a dream. A microchip that can transform heat into electric current is now
working on a lab bench at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its
inventors say it could harness heat from a car’s engine and provide power for
its electronics, charge laptop batteries by recycling heat from the computer’s
microprocessor, or simply bask in the baking desert sun generating
electricity.
The device may be clever, but it has a decidedly unprepossessing name:…
