In the not too distant future, the practice of hooking up all your devices to the wall for the night could become as extinct as the dodo.

Research done by professors at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) has proved the possibility of using thin film piezoelectric screens in electronic devices to act as supplementary charging sources for these devices. This could be especially useful in all your iDevices, where a large amount of finger tapping occurs on the device every day.

Piezoelectric devices can be used to convert kinetic energy, for example, tapping on a screen, into electrical energy, that can be used to charge a battery. Club4Climate, a dance club in the United Kingdom, is using a piezoelectric film in the club's dance floor to assist in providing the energy required to run the electrical systems of the club.

For more information on piezoelectric materials, you can visit http://www.howstuffworks.com/piezoelectricity-info.htm