闃呰鐞嗚В
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34
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Batteries Built by Viruses
What
do
chicken
pox,
the
common
cold
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the
flu
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and
AIDS
have
in
common? They're all disease caused by viruses
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tiny microorganisms that can
pass
from
person
to
person.
It鈥榮
no
wonder1
that
when
most
people
think
about
viruses,
finding
ways
to
steer
clear
of2
viruses
is
what's
on
people's
minds.
Not everyone runs from the tiny disease carriers, though3.In Cambridge
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Massachusetts4, scientists have discovered that some viruses can be helpful
in an unusual way. They are putting viruses to work
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teaching them to build
some of the world鈥榮 smallest rechargeable batteries.
Viruses and batteries may seem like an unusual pair, but they're not so
strange for engineer Angela Belcher, who first came up with5 the idea. At the
Massachusetts
Institute
of
Technology
(MIT)
in
Cambridge
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she
and
her
collaborators bring together different areas of science in new ways. In the case
of
the
virus-built
batteries
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the
scientists
combine
what
they
know
about
biology
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technology and production techniques.
Belcher鈥榮 team includes Paula Hammond
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who helps put together the tiny
batteries
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and Yet-Ming Chiang, an expert on how to store energy in the form of
a
battery.
"We're
work
ing
on
things
we
traditionally
don鈥榯
associate
with
nature," says Hammond.
Many
batteries
are
already
pretty
small.
You
can
hold
A
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C
and
D
batteries6 in your hand. The coin-like batteries that power watches are often
smaller
than
a
penny.
However
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every
year
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new
electronic
devices
like
personal
music
players
or
cell
phones
get
smaller
than
the
year
before.
As
these devices shrink
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ordinary bakeries won鈥榯 be small enough to fit inside.
The ideal battery will store a lot of energy in a small package. Right now
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Belcher鈥榮 model battery
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a metallic disk completely built by viruses
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looks like