The Georgia Institute researchers started with plain old printer paper, onto which they glued sheets of aluminum foil and Teflon. Then it was just a matter of folding the stuff into different shapes and seeing what might happen. Of particular interest was the Slinky-shaped configuration, which you can see above. As the different rings come into contact and separate again, charge is accumulated. The design was able to generate about 0.14 watts per square meter—via 2 microAmperes of current—enough to power four commercial LEDs at once. This electricity was harvested simply enough via copper wires running along the aluminum foil. As an IEEE summary notes, the same configuration could be used alternatively as a pressure sensor, e.g. mechanical force revealed through charge.