Microbattery built by viruses

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:

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.

Battery assembled by viruses (MIT New Office)

• [querent]

  ‘s pretty cool. i want em wired into my cns so i can increase firing frequency in different sectors. then i wouldn’t need drugs!

  oh, but wait…then with the mind control. i’ll be fucked.

• [RedShirt77]

  Yeah, didn’t I am legend start like this.

  That said, I wand some bionic hearind and a hud projected into my eyeballs whenever they get done designing this stuff.

• [Chevan]

  >Now we’re giving viruses the capacity to generate their own portable electricity sources.

  Not really. The most important parts of the batteries created were all of human origin.

• [Peaceflag2007]

  Next: viruses that build little axes and pitchforks and attack disease.

• [sarsface]

  We can alter a virus to create a battery but we can’t cure AIDs…

• [Anonymous]

  Weird redundancy: “There are one million micrometers in a meter.”

  …while the more useful and much less obvious comment “There are 5280 feet in a mile” is never seen.

• [Takuan]

  for many good and complex reasons.

• [w000t]

  And to think people were worried about bird flu. Wait’ll they get a load of robot flu…

• [MichaelRN]

  If they can get viruses to do simple, mundane tasks such as building batteries, how much more work would it take to train those same viruses to act as TSA screeners?

  What about other tasks? No need to outsource the helpdesk to Bangalore when a nice local virus can be hosted in the back of the break-room fridge…

• [El_Cid]

  Great. Now we’re giving viruses the capacity to generate their own portable electricity sources. When the virus-based cyber-droids come to hunt us down, don’t blame me.

• [toxonix]

  My human has cells of various sizes. These devices are half the size of which human cell?