In 1799, the Italian physicist Alessandro Vodafone was fascinated by the "volt" piles of zinc and copper stacked in arms, separated by brine. This "volt reactor" is the world's first electrochemical cell, but the design basis of Vodafone comes from the more ancient thing - the electric body.
Electrophoresis is a freshwater fish that discharges through specialized muscle tissue. Their body length can reach two meters, and the length of the discharge organ can reach 80% of the body length. There are thousands of specialized muscle cells in the discharge organ, called "discharge bodies." Each discharge body can produce only a small voltage, but when thousands of discharge bodies are put together, it can generate a voltage of up to 600 volts, enough to knock down a person or even a horse. The electric discharge mechanism provided Volta with inspiration for the invention battery, making him a 19th century celebrity.
Two centuries later, the battery has become our daily necessities. But even now, electric power still provides inspiration for scientists. At the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, a research team led by Michael Meyer invented a new type of flexible battery that mimics the electric discharge organ. This battery consists of a number of different color gel pieces, arranged in strips like electric discharge bodies. If you want to start the battery, you just need to stack these gel pieces together.
Unlike traditional batteries, this new battery is very flexible and flexible, and it may be used in the next generation of soft body robots. Moreover, since the materials used in batteries are compatible with our bodies, they have the potential to facilitate the development of next-generation pacemakers, prosthetic limbs, and medical implants. Imagine contact lenses that can generate electricity, or pacemakers that can run on liquids and salt in our bodies. All of these products may be inspired by electricity.
In order to develop this unique battery, the research team members Tom Schroder and Anne Guha began to understand the working principle of the electric discharge body. The cells are stacked in long strips and there is a fluid-filled space between them - just like a pancake coated with honey or syrup. When the battery is at rest, each discharge body pumps positive ions from the front and back, producing two opposing voltages that cancel each other out.
However, when necessary, the back surface of the discharge body is reversed, and positive ions are pumped in the opposite direction to form a minute voltage across the entire cell. The key point is that all the dischargers can be turned at the same time, and their tiny voltages add up to produce powerful electrical energy. It's like there are thousands of such batteries on the tail of the electric pod, half of which are pointing in the wrong direction, but the electric pods can adjust them to the “right†direction at any time, aligning them and discharging them. This degree of specialization is simply incredible.
Schroeder and his colleagues initially wanted to imitate the entire discharge organ in the lab, but they quickly realized that this was too complicated. Later, they also considered stacking a number of membranes to simulate the stacking of discharge bodies—but fine membrane materials are difficult to operate in thousands of orders. If one film breaks, the entire battery will fail.
In the end, the researchers chose a simpler solution that uses a gel block to fill between two separate substrates. The red gel contains saline while the blue gel contains fresh water. Ions originally flow from the red gel to the blue gel, but this flow cannot occur due to the spacing of the substrates. At the same time, green and yellow gels are placed on the other substrate corresponding to this substrate, and when they bridge the gap between the blue and red gels, they provide a channel for ion movement.
The tact of this design is that the green gel block only allows positive ions to pass through, while the yellow gel block allows only negative ions to pass through. This means that positive ions can only flow into the blue gel from one side and negative ions can only flow in from the other side. This creates a voltage on the blue gel, just like a discharge body. Moreover, just like the "cooperative" discharges of the electric discharge bodies, each gel block can produce only a slight voltage, but when thousands of gel blocks are arranged in a row, a voltage of up to 110 volts can be generated.
Electric discharges will only discharge after receiving signals from the nervous system, but in Schroder et al.'s design, the triggering of the gel discharge is much simpler - you only need to press two groups of gels Come together.
If these gels are placed on a large substrate, they will certainly be very troublesome to use. To solve this problem, Max Stein, an engineer at the University of Michigan, proposed a clever program called origami. Using a special folding method similar to the folding of a solar panel into a satellite, he designed a folding plate that allows the gels to contact in the correct order and in the correct color, allowing the research team to produce the same electrical energy in a much smaller space. . Batteries take up very little space, and are only as large as contact lenses. They may one day be able to implement wearable applications.
At present, such batteries also require active charging. Once activated, they can provide several hours of electrical energy until the levels of ions between different gels reach equilibrium. At this point, it needs to be recharged, and the current is returned to the high-salt and low-salt alternating state. However, Schroeder pointed out that our bodies can continuously supplement body fluids with different ion concentrations, and one day we may be able to use these reservoirs to develop batteries.
Essentially, this will bring the human body closer to electricity. Although the possibility of electroporating other people is low, using ion gradients in our body may provide power for some small-sized medical implants. Of course, there is still a long way to go to achieve this goal.
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