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As anyone who read the blog on electric cars below will know, I’m skeptical of just changing the symptom without addressing the cause.  The big problem with electric cars (as with computers, phones, and even wind and wave power) is that batteries, to date, are uneconomical in terms of the energy that is lost in storage.  A team at Boston’s MIT university have come up with a solution that is part terrifying and part exciting.  These braniacs have genetically engineered a virus that builds rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in the form of a plastic film. 

Whatsmore, these nanocreatures were created using green processes: the researchers bred the viruses to self-assemble nanoscale battery films by creating billions of random variations, then using the survival-of-the-fittest principle to select those that best performed desired tasks. (One man’s breeding is another man’s genetic engineering…!) And the batteries can be constructed in an environmentally-friendly manner, avoiding toxic solvents and energy-intensive procedures:  “Because the viruses are living organisms, we had to use only water-based solvents, no high pressures and no high temperatures,” says Angela Belcher, the study coauthor.

The viruses were selected from common bacteriophages, which infect bacteria but are harmless to humans. To the Buddhists in the house who say “But what about the bacteria?  Aren’t they living creatures too?”  I can only answer – if we keep using the old batteries there won’t be any bacteria left to care…!

In demonstrations, batteries made using the micro-contact printing method were able to be recharged hundreds of times with no detectable drop in performance – now that truly is incredible. We still have the problem of how the charge will be created, but this is extremely interesting news for greeniacs everywhere who can overlook the Frankenstein element of living creatures creating things – but wait!  Isn’t that what farming is all about?  In this case, the farm is just nano size – not as picturesque, but then global warming isn’t too pretty either…

Eventually, they plan to commercialize the printable battery films. Last week, MIT President Susan Hockfield demonstrated the prototype to U.S. President Barack Obama.  This wasn’t just a courtesy: funding for the research was provided by the U.S. Army Research Office Institute and the U.S. National Science Foundation.  Here’s hoping Obama will use it for the right purposes….