Powerful Batteries That Assemble Themselves

September 29, 2006 | Source: Technology Review

Biology may be the key to producing light-weight, inexpensive, and high-performance batteries that could transform military uniforms into power sources and, eventually, improve electric and hybrid vehicles.

Through a combination of genetic design and directed evolution, Angela Belcher, an MIT professor of biological engineering and materials science, and colleagues have created viruses that coat themselves with inorganic materials they wouldn’t touch in nature, forming crystalline materials, which are doped at regular intervals with gold to enhance their conductivity. Then the coated viruses line up on top of a polymer sheet that serves as the electrolyte, to form one of the battery’s electrodes.

Now Belcher is engineering viruses to assemble the second electrode, with the goal of creating an extremely compact, self-assembled battery.