Scientists Create More Powerful Batteries with Viruses: Biology Melds with Technology

How do you make better batteries? You use viruses, of course. Scientists have found a way to boost lithium-air battery performance with the help of modified viruses. The findings could be huge when it comes to drastically increasing power per battery weight.

Lithium-air batteries have become a popular area of research in recent years. They hold the promise of drastically increasing power without overly increasing size and weight. This could lead to electric cars with greater driving range. Yet in order to create a battery that's actually feasible, scientists need to develop better, more durable materials for the batteries' electrodes.

In order to continue the research around these batteries, the scientists produced an array of nanowires, each about 80 nanometers across, using a genetically modified virus called M13. This virus can capture molecules of metals from water and bind them into structural shapes. In this case, wires of manganese oxide were made by the viruses. Unlike wires grown through conventional methods, though, these virus-built nanowires had a rough, spiky surface. This dramatically increased their surface area.

This increase in surface area in particular provides a big advantage in lithium-air batteries' rate of charging and discharging. Also, unlike conventional fabrication methods, which involved energy-intensive high temperatures and chemicals, this process can be carried out at room temperature using a water-based process.

The final part of the process was the addition of a small amount of a metal, such as palladium, which greatly increased the electrical conductivity of the nanowires and allowed them to catalyze reactions that took place during charging and discharging. This new process drastically lowered how much of the expensive material was needed.

These modifications have the potential to produce a battery that could provide as much as two to three times greater energy density, which is the amount of energy that can be stored for a given weight, than today's best lithium-ion batteries. In other words, these lithium-air batteries could change electronics and make them far more efficient than they currently are.

That said, this is still early-stage research. Much more work needs to be done before a lithium-air battery that's suitable for production is produced.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

Want to learn more about the project? Check out the video below, courtesy of YouTube.