Viruses Spark Up Electricity Hunt at Berkley Lab

Scientists of the U.S. Department of Energy`s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are very close to creating miniature gadgets that “harvest electrical energy from everyday tasks,” according to a Berkley Lab news release.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The recent discovery may turn out to be just the thing we all need in a world desperately looking for renewable energy resources. The Berkley Lab team`s project relies on piezoelectricity, a concept that dates back to the 1880s and that basically means mechanical stress, such as a tap or a vibration, can cause the appearance of an electric charge in a solid.

Using a virus ” the M13 bacteriophage ” instead of the traditional piezoelectric materials that are toxic to humans, the scientists built up a true power-generating viral “sandwich.” They stacked up 20 layers of virus films between two gold-plated electrodes and managed to generate about a quarter the voltage of a triple A battery.

“More research is needed, but our work is a promising first step toward the development of personal power generators, actuators for use in nano-devices, and other devices based on viral electronics,” says Seung-Wuk Lee, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab`s Physical Biosciences Division and a UC Berkeley associate professor of bioengineering.

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