[extropy-chat] Virus-Assembled Batteries

[Gary Miller]

How would such an improved electrode impact the life span of such a battery.

Would it become unable to hold a charge three times faster?

Or would battery life expectancy actually improve also?

I work in a computer sales kiosk and we find people needing new batteries
for their laptops after about 3 years.

At $80 to $100 a pop, replacement batteries are big business.

Will the battery manufacturers do anything to improve battery life or is
this just more industry planned obsolescence?

If practical these batteries should be a boon for Wireless PDA sales and
laptops which currently only get about 3.5 hours runtime on a battery
charge.  

If you buy the 5.5 hour batteries you spend about a $100 more for the extra
two hours.

Since only about 15% to 20% opt for the extended battery, I'd say if you
could triple the battery life and extend the life from 3 years to 5 years
beyond the period of time most people keep their laptops that just about
everyone would opt to pay the extra $100 for the better battery.

Battery makers would need to recoup the cost of the replacement batteries
which would no longer be needed up front or the industry would still
experience a overall loss.

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Davis
Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 7:30 PM
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: [extropy-chat] Virus-Assembled Batteries

Too good to pass up.

Best, Jeff Davis

   "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                           Ray Charles

                ****************

http://www.technologyreview.com/BizTech/wtr_16673,296,p1.html

Friday, April 07, 2006

Virus-Assembled Batteries
A biological template ramps up electrode performance and scales down size.

By Kevin Bullis

More than half the weight and size of today's batteries comes from
supporting materials that contribute nothing to storing energy. Now
researchers have demonstrated that genetically engineered viruses can
assemble active battery materials into a compact, regular structure, to make
an ultra-thin, transparent battery electrode that stores nearly three times
as much energy as those in today's lithium-ion batteries.
It is the first step toward high-capacity, self-assembling batteries. 


Applications could include high-energy batteries laminated invisibly to flat
screens in cell phones and laptops or conformed to fit hearing aids. The
same assembly technique could also lead to more effective catalysts and
solar panels, according to the MIT researchers who developed the technology,
by making it possible to finely control the positions of inorganic
materials. 


"Most of it was done through genetic manipulation -- giving an organism that
wouldn't normally make battery electrodes the information to make a battery
electrode, and to assemble it into a device," says Angela Belcher, a
researcher on the project and an MIT professor of materials science and
engineering and biological engineering. "My dream is to have a DNA sequence
that codes for the synthesis of materials, and then out of a beaker to pull
out a device. And I think this is a big step along that path." 


The researchers, in work reported online this week in Science, used M13
viruses to make the positive electrode of a lithium-ion battery, which they
tested with a conventional negative electrode. The virus is made of
proteins, most of which coil to form a long, thin cylinder. By adding
sequences of nucleotides to the virus' DNA, the researchers directed these
proteins to form with an additional amino acid that binds to cobalt ions.
The viruses with these new proteins then coat themselves with cobalt ions in
a solution, which eventually leads, after reactions with water, to cobalt
oxide, an advanced battery material with much higher storage capacity than
the carbon-based materials now used in lithium-ion batteries. 


To make an electrode, the researchers first dip a polymer electrolyte into a
solution of engineered viruses. The viruses assemble into a uniform coating
on the electrolyte. This coated electrolyte is then dipped into a solution
containing battery materials.
The viruses arrange these materials into an ordered crystal structure good
for high-density batteries. 


[Click here for an illustration of the battery-forming process.] 


These electrodes proved to have twice the capacity of carbon-based ones. To
improve this further, the researchers again turned to genetic engineering.
While keeping the genetic code for the cobalt assembly, they added an
additional strand of DNA that produces virus proteins that bind to gold. The
viruses then assembled as nanowires composed of both cobalt oxide and gold
particles -- and the resulting electrodes stored 30 percent more energy. 







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