ALEAF

What it does

The main function of this product is to supply electronic devices in a sustainable and autonomous way, using piezoelectric and pyroelectric materials which have a very reduced use in the current market.

Your inspiration

We believe that nowadays it is very important to find new sources of renewable energy. Shortly before starting the project, we studied the existence of certain materials capable of generating energy through everyday phenomena such as heat or deformation. We started to investigate this little exploited topic and we realized that piezo-electric and pyroelectric materials are difficult to apply on a large scale, so we focused on small but widely used things, such as charging personal electronic devices: mobile phones, tablets or computers among others.

How it works

Aleaf has several layers of piezoelectric and pyroelectric materials interspersed that allow to absorb all the movement and temperature change that the device experience throughout the day. Blows or contact with other objects in the bag, its own heat generated by the use, the deformation caused by carrying it in the pocket... It also has a tempered glass protector made of piezo-electric that takes advantage of all the touches that the mobile receives daily. Aleaf is loaded by the use of the phone and it carries its own built-in battery, in addition, it protects our device as a normal case. When our device runs out of charge, we remove the charger from the bottom of the base and we connect it to the mobile that automatically starts charging.

Design process

This project began without form, but with a clear idea: to take advantage of the energy generated by deformations and temperature changes. The main idea was to use the piezo-electric materials to supply the movement of the escalators by placing plates at the entrance and exit of the device, however, because this field was already heavily exploited and not very useful due to the wear of the materials, we began to think on a smaller scale. We tried to identify something that would involve all of us, and that was how Aleaf emerged, a way to charge our electronic devices without needing to plug them into the electricity. Because these devices are heated with use, we incorporate pyroelectric to increase the amount of energy generated. We began to make sketches to apply our idea to computers, tablets, television and mobile controls, among others, and decided to lean over the phones that we saw more useful. Once the idea was clear in our head, we moved it to paper, we have been studied shapes, colors and materials until it was defined with enough clarity to model it in AutoCad and render it in KeyShot.

How it is different

The competitors that Aleaf has in the current market are: traditional chargers, external charging batteries and charger cases. However, our product stands out for two main reasons, its sustainability and its autonomy. In the first place, our product is a saving of energy and money for the customer, charging the mobile phone consumes annually 5.26 KWh per person and 0.86 €, if we extend it to the more than 5.000 million users that have the telephone mobile, we would be talking about 26,300 million KWh and 4,300 € saved per year worldwide. Secondly, Aleaf provides a comfort that its competitors lack, since it does not need to be charged to be able to charge. Our case is loaded with the use of the device itself, so when you run out of battery you just have to remove the charger from the bottom of the case and connect it to your device.

Future plans

The next step we would like to carry out is to make a functional model and several prototypes so that some of the future users can start using it and give us their opinion to make improvements. It is a new project that, when carried out in practice, will require several corrections and for this the best thing would be to receive feedback from our future clients.

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