MIT researchers made progress using viruses to assemble microbatteries that are
half the size of a human cell. Paula Hammond, Angela Belcher, and Yet-Ming
Chiang and colleagues have already used the viral assembly method to make a
battery's anode and electrolyte and hope to fabricate the cathode next,
resulting in a complete device that could someday power biosensors or medical
implants. (Seen here is an array of the battery electrodes, each one just four
micrometers in diameter. There are one million micrometers in a meter.) From
the MIT News Office:
Newsoffice 2008 Virus-2-Enlarged First, on a clear, rubbery material the
team used a common technique called soft lithography to create a pattern of
tiny posts either four or eight millionths of a meter in diameter. On top of
these posts, they then deposited several layers of two polymers that together
act as the solid electrolyte and battery separator.
Next came viruses that preferentially self-assemble atop the polymer layers
on the posts, ultimately forming the anode. In 2006, Hammond, Belcher, Chiang
and colleagues reported in Science how to do this. Specifically, they altered
the virus's genes so it makes protein coats that collect molecules of cobalt
oxide to form ultrathin wires -- together, the anode.
The final result: a stamp of tiny posts, each covered with layers of
electrolyte and the cobalt oxide anode.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/virus-battery-0820.html
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