Marrying piezoelectrics with a thinfilm microchip coating, those scientists Down Under have for the first time identified just how much energy your pressure can generate.
In the 1990s, they combined thin-film coating techniques with getter technology for the LHC and that paved the way for the solar panel applications we see today at the Geneva International Airport.
But Dr Bruel found that if a hydrogen-treated wafer is first fused to another wafer that has been given a glass coating, the force of the gas bubbles will instead cause a thin silicon film to peel off the one and on to the other.