More than two hundred years ago, the Italian physicist Volt inspired the structure of the electric fuselage and invented the earliest battery, the voltaic battery. Nowadays, after studying the principle of electric discharge, people have also developed a "soft battery". This "soft battery" is soft and flexible, and may be used in the next generation of software robots and pacemakers.
The new "soft battery" was jointly developed by the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and the research teams of the University of Michigan and the University of California. Related research papers were published on the 13th of December in the international academic journal Nature.
Previous scientific research has found that electric power generators can generate electricity by generating organs, and their power generating organs account for 80% of their two-meter-long body. The muscles on both sides of the tail of the electrocautery consist of regularly arranged 6000-10000 pieces of muscle flake, which are separated by connective tissue, and many nerves pass through the central nervous system. The head is positive and the tail is negative. Each muscle slice resembles a small battery and generates about 150 millivolts of voltage. But nearly 10,000 “small batteries†are connected in series, and the voltage at the time of discharge can be as high as 600-800 volts, enough to kill one person or even one horse.
The team of Michael Mayer, a professor at the Adolphe Merkle Institute at the University of Fribourg, imitated the electric organs of the electric eel. It contains gel blocks of various colors and is arranged in a long row, much like the electricity-generating cells of an electric eel. To open the battery, just press these gels together. Unlike traditional batteries, these batteries are soft and flexible and may be used in the next generation of software robots. Because the material is more suitable for the human body, this kind of battery is also expected to be used for the next generation of pacemakers.
In order to develop this unusual battery, the research team members Thomas BH Schroeder and Anirvan Guha began to read a lot about the principle of electric discharge. The cells are stacked in strips and the cells are filled with fluid. It's like a pancake coated with honey or syrup, and then put it down.
When the battery is in a resting state, each of the generating cells will transfer cations from the back and the front, producing two opposite currents that cancel each other out. However, when electricity is needed, the backside of the electricity generating cells will be turned over, and the mutual cations will be transported in the opposite direction, and a voltage will be generated. The key point is that when each generating cell performs this operation at the same time, the added voltage is very high. It's like there are a few thousand small batteries in the tail of the battery. Half of them are in the opposite direction, but they can be flipped to make them all the same and generate voltage. "This professional level is simply amazing," Schroeder said.
So Schroeder and his colleagues first thought about remodeling similar power generation organs in the lab, but they quickly realized that it was too complicated. Later, they thought that they could make a large number of cell membranes to imitate the heap of electricity generating cells, but these materials could not be operated in large quantities because if one was broken, the entire system would be shut down. Schroeder said: "This will meet the Christmas string problem, that is, a broken bulb, a string of light bulbs are not lit."
Finally, he and Guha chose a simpler device, which involved arranging gel blocks on two separate plates. Look at the bottom plate in the picture below. The red gel contains salt water and the blue one contains fresh water. The ions can flow from the red gel to the blue gel, but since the gel is dispersed, the ions do not flow. When the green and yellow gels on the other plate are bridged by the gap between the red and blue gels, they provide passageways through which ions can pass.
It is worth noting that there is a well-designed place here: the green gel block only allows the passage of cations, and the yellow one only allows the passage of anions. That is to say, cations can only flow into the blue gel from one side and the anion goes in from the other side. The voltage around the blue gel will be like the power generation cells, and each gel block will generate a small voltage, but Thousands of gel blocks are arranged in rows, producing up to 110 volts.
After the electrical neurons send out signals, the electricity-generating cells of the eel will begin to discharge. In Schroeder's gel, triggers are much simpler, as long as the gels are pressed together.
However, if the plate carrying the gel is too large, it is troublesome. But Max Shtein, an engineer at the University of Michigan, proposed a clever solution - origami. Similar to the folding of a satellite solar panel, he uses a special folding method to fold the sheet and fold it so that the correct colors touch in the correct order. The space occupied by the entire battery will be much smaller, the size of the lens is only as large as the contact lens, and it may be worn on one day.
But for now, this kind of battery must have the charging function. Because once the battery is activated, it can supply power for several hours, then the ions in the entire gel will tend to balance and the battery will be dead. At this point, the battery needs to be powered on to return the gel to a high salinity and low salinity arrangement. Schroeder said that the body will continue to supplement fluids with different levels of ions. He imagined that one day might use these liquids to make batteries.
Ken Catania of the University of Vanderbilt in the United States spent many years studying the biological principles of electrokinesis. He said: "I am surprised that electric power can bring so much contribution to the scientific community. This is a good example for basic scientific values." (Reporter Wang Can)
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