The Latest in Shell Phone Technology: How Abalones Could Help Build Self-Healing Gadgets
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 03.25.08
Image courtesy of scragz via flickr
Abalone shells and batteries would seem to share little in common; indeed, the former is the type of item you'd expect to find on the seafloor or in a marine biologist's lab while the latter is an essential component you'd find in most gadgets. And, were it not for the groundbreaking work of MIT materials scientist Angela Belcher, that distinction would likely have remained in place.
Her work as a graduate student studying the shell-making process in the abalone led her to pose a simple, though no less insightful, question: "What if we could assemble materials like the abalone does?" That epiphany, prompted by the realization that, as she put it, "abalones make this amazing material out of a common mineral" (the shell is 98% calcium carbonate), has led to her current work developing smart nano-materials that could provide a huge boost to the next generation of electronics.
Working with several colleagues, Belcher "grew" the first biologically based rechargeable battery - consisting solely of a virus engineered to bind to cobalt oxide. The idea is to place the viral film on whatever gadget you want to power. Belcher believes that these films, when perfected and made commercially viable, could end the era of short-lived batteries by creating novel electronic, optic and magnetic materials. Even better fuel cells and ultra-tiny nano-computer chips may not be out of reach.
"What if we could make a material that is self-re-assembling? What if iPods and Blackberrys could genetically mend their own cracks? These devices get dropped; they break; what material can we make so they fix themselves," Belcher mused.
Now there's a thought.
See also: ::Nano-Tech Batteries May Rival Lithium-Ions In Hybrids, ::MIT: Move Over Batteries, Here Come the Nanotube-Enhanced Capacitors
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sweet
I caught a virus from myself-healing iPod. Now I've got a cause of the runs...guess it's an iPood...
;)
MIT has gone nano crazy. History has given us lessons where new technology has turned into the toxic problem of tomorrow. Is any group at MIT or the world working to halt all nano technology until proven safe? Right now the world is forced to breathe and eat nano until proven unsafe. Asbestos is hard to clean up, just imagine toxins that can NOT be detected. Unless you have elite tools. Cough, cough...
Wallydallas History has also been full of people scared of the future who tried to stop it till it was proven safe! yes technology has made some massive mistakes but many are not actually the fault of the technology but the way in which humans handle it and don't use it in the correct way.
if we wait for things to be proved safe nothing will ever happen as there is in science the truth that all things are proved only by the last test, with the next test having the potential to prove ideas wrong.
nano tech actually is one of the greatest hopes for saving our planet. we can reduce and stop our over use of the world but in order to return it to a proper state we need a way to make things as efficient as possible and help remove the pollutants from the environment. nano tech is the best way this can be done, as long as it is done properly not abused!
I just keep wondering whether Science is creating new problems faster than it solves the old ones?
I can see one flaw in that. How do you make the material remember the way you want it to rebuild and not just go whichever way it naturally grows?
This would be pretty cool though. Of course that would mean that every product engineered like this would be unique to itself so replacing parts or adding on parts would likely be out of the question. Unless these things work like those little bonsai trees.
how interesting... :]