More than two hundred years ago, Italian physicist Volt was inspired by the body structure of electric eel and invented the earliest battery - volt battery.Nowadays, after humans studied the principle of electric eel discharge, they developed the software battery 'This' soft battery' is soft and flexible and may be used in the next generation of software robots and pacemakers.
The new 'software battery' was developed by a research team at the University of Friborg, Switzerland, and the University of Michigan and the University of California in the United States. Relevant research papers were published on December 13 in the international academic journal Nature.
Earlier scientific studies have found that electric eel can generate electricity through the power generation organs, its power generation organs accounted for 80% of its two-meter-long body.Electric eel on both sides of the tail muscles by the rules of the 6000-10000 pieces of muscle composition, Separated by connective tissue between the sheets, and by many nerves through the central nervous system. The head is positive, the tail is negative, each muscle sheet like a small battery, can produce about 150 millivolts of voltage.But thousands of ' Small battery 'in series, the discharge voltage can be as high as 600-800 volts, enough to electrocute one person, or even a horse.
The team of Michael Mayer at the University of Friul's Adolphe Merkle Institute mimics the electricity-generating organs of electric eels, which contain long-range gel patches of various colors , Much like the electric cells of electric eel. To open the battery, just press the gel together. Unlike traditional batteries, this battery is soft and flexible and may be used in the next generation of soft robots. The human body, this battery is also expected to be used to create the next generation of pacemakers.
In order to develop this unusual battery, Thomas BH Schroeder and Anirvan Guha, members of the research team, began reading extensively about the discharge principle of electric eels, stacked in long strips filled with liquid. It's like a pancake coated with honey or syrup, which is then tipped over.
When the electric eel is in a resting state, each generating cell transports the cations from the back and the front, producing two opposing currents, which cancel each other out, but when the electric eel needs electricity, the back of the cell will turn over, Transfers the cation in the opposite direction, will produce the voltage.The key is, when each electricity-generating cell completes this operation at the same time, the voltage that adds up is extremely high.This is like having thousands in the tail of the electric eel Small batteries, half of them in the opposite direction, but they can be flipped so that they are all in line to create the voltage. "The level of expertise is simply amazing," Schroeder said.
So Schroeder and his colleagues first thought of remodeling similar power-generating organs in the lab, but soon realized that it was too complicated, and then they thought of making a lot of cell membranes to mimic the pile of power cells, but These materials can not be manipulated in large quantities, because if one is broken, the whole system will be shut down. "Schroeder said:" There is a problem with Christmas lights, that is, one bulb is broken and none of the other bulbs are lit.
Finally, he and Guha chose a simpler unit, which involved arranging the gel packs on two separate plates. Look at the bottom plate in the picture below. The red gel contains saline, blue with fresh water, Ions can flow from the red gel to the blue gel, but the ions do not flow because the gel is dispersed.When the green and yellow gel on the other plate bridges the gap between the red and blue gels , Provides a passageway for ions to pass through.
It is noteworthy that there is a clever design here: green gel block allows only the passage of cations, yellow allows only the passage of anions, which means that cations can only flow into the blue gel from one side, the anions flow from the other side, A voltage is generated around the blue gel, just like power cells, and each gel block produces a small voltage, but thousands of gel blocks line up to produce 110 volts.
After the electric eel neuron signals, the electric eel's generating cells begin to discharge, and in Schroeder's gel design, the trigger is much simpler, just pressing the gel together.
However, it is cumbersome to carry gels over the assembly, but Max Shtein, an engineer at the University of Michigan, presents a clever solution - the origami, which, like the folding solar satellite panels, uses a special folding method Folded to fold the sheets so that the correct color contacts in the correct order, so that the entire battery takes up much less space, the size of only contact lenses so big, maybe one day can wear to the body.
But for now, this battery must have a charging function, because the battery once activated, can supply a few hours, then the ions in the gel will tend to be balanced, the battery will no electricity when the need to pass the battery On power-up, the gel returns to high salinity and low salinity, and Schroeder said the body will continually replenish liquids with different ionic contents, imagining that one day it might be possible to use the liquids to make batteries.
Ken Catania at Vanderbilt University in the United States spent years studying the biology of electric eels and said: 'I was surprised that electric eel can make so much contribution to the scientific community that it is one for basic scientific values Very good example.
