Virus-Built Wearable Batteries Could Power Military
Batteries made of viruses can one day be sprayed on military uniforms as wearable power supplies.
A group of researchers from MIT, a group from the University of Maryland, used two different viruses to make the cathode and anode of lithium-ion batteries.
If research in Maryland is successful, components of lithium-ion batteries can be grown and harvested from tobacco.
At the same time, MIT research can produce lithium-ion batteries that can be woven into clothes to power a variety of electronic devices from unmanned aerial vehicles to mobile phones.
\"A typical soldier must carry a few pounds of battery.
But if you can turn their clothes into a battery pack, their weight can drop a lot, \"said Mark Allen, a postdoctoral fellow at the Angela Belcher lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
\"For travelers who travel a lot, the same is true for highway warriors.
\"As anyone infected with the flu knows, the virus is very effective in invading cells, hijacking their machines, and then using them to make their own new copies.
For centuries, doctors have gone out of their way to stop or slow down the virus.
Now scientists are turning the extraordinary ability of the virus to produce a large number of the same micro-structures into human interests.
Scientists can already build similar structures, but they are not as fast and efficient as viruses.
\"Usually need some top
A downward process like exposure produces these structures, \"said James Culver, a scientist at the University of Maryland.
Author of a recent paper published in the journal ACS Nano that details li-ion battery.
\"We have a virus solution and we let it stay overnight and the virus does anything.
Scientists at MIT and Maryland use two viruses that are harmless to humans.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology use the bacteria-infected virus M13.
Scientists in Maryland use tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), a common pathogen in tobacco plants.
The host of the virus may be different, but the shape of each virus is similar;
Long, thin, cylindrical.
As Allen reported at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston this week, the M13 can be adjusted to produce a fluorine-iron cathode for lithium-ion batteries.
Alan and his colleagues finally hope to expand their batteries.
Partially produced so they can spray on light weight, rechargeable and long
Long-lasting lithium-ion batteries can power everything from unmanned aerial vehicles used by the military to mobile phones carried by civilians.
This new cathode is based on the early construction of the battery anode and cathode by the MIT group and is also environment-friendly because it occurs at room temperature and in water.
The MIT research is nominally green, but the University of Maryland research may actually be green.
\"For our current purpose, we do everything to the virus in the growth room of the laboratory,\" Calver said . \".
\"But growing them in this area is the whole idea.
It is cheap and relatively easy to do so.
\"Farmers won\'t harvest battery parts very quickly, but their new sun is already strong,\" says Culver. The silicon-
The anode based on the lithium ion battery shows nearly 10-
Culver says the capacity has doubled compared to the existing graphite anode.