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In 2007 Zhong Lin Wang, a materials scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US, developed a generator composed of a forest of piezoelectric zinc oxide nanowires topped by a flat conductive plate. As the plate is pushed down, the wires bend, producing a voltage that induces current to flow into the plate. Now Wang has turned this idea into an electricity-generating thread, which he plans to weave into a fabric. His team figured out how to grow the nanowires on a strand of Kevlar fibre instead of a flat surface, so that the wires stick out from the fibre like the bristles on a pipe-cleaner.