Electric eel - inspired to create biocompatible hydrogel batteries

Researchers in Switzerland and the United States are inspired by electric eels (also called electric eels) to create a biocompatible hydrogel battery that can generate electricity inside the body.

Previously, electric eels combine potassium and sodium ions in cell membranes to make self-defense electrical weapons. Imitating that system, researchers used sodium and chloride components of salt, dissolved in hydrogel.

Then, thousands of salty gel drops were printed on a plastic sheet, alternating with hydrogel droplets of pure water. The team then created a second sheet of alternating droplets made with selective Hydrogel.

Each drop allows one to charge either sodium charge or negatively charged chloride.

When the plates are pressed together, the saline solutions combine, the extract droplets will make sodium and chloride ions in opposite directions and generate electric current.

This study, published in Nature, is a new experiment by scientists and engineers from the University of Michigan, the Adolphe Merkle Institute at the University of Friborg in Switzerland and the University of California-San Diego.

Co-author of the study, Max Shtein, associate professor of materials science and engineering in Michigan, said: "Electric eels have polarized and depolarized thousands of cells immediately to prevent potential currents. This is an attractive system to look at from the technical aspect - performance indicators, basic building blocks of eels and how it operates above. "

One challenge is how to specifically arrange alternating cells in the correct order so that they generate an electric current when combined at the same time.

The team solved this problem with a technique called origami called Miura, which is often used to attach solar panels to satellites for launch. Different types of droplets alternating with a precise pattern on a flat sheet have been recorded by laser tracking using the Miura model. When the pressure is applied, the sheet quickly folds together, placing the cells in the correct position.

According to the researchers, the goal now is to improve the efficiency of this new device, and one day it could be used to power implantable or wearable electronics. There is also a belief that hydrogel batteries can be powered by using the bioelectric processes of the body, like electric eels. But while an electric eel can deliver up to 600 volts, the hydrogel system will be much less.

"Electric bodies at eels are extremely sophisticated; they are much better than the energy we create," said Michael Mayer, a professor of physiology at Adolphe Merkle Institute of Friborg. "But what's important to us is finding the basic principles of what's going on . "

See more:

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2. After 16 years, scientists have successfully built ultra-thin solar cell systems, which can be applied to any surface
3. New molecular printing technology can reproduce a complex chemical environment similar to the human body