TPO - Researchers have developed a hair-thin battery that can power robots as small as punctuation marks.
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A tiny battery powers the robot (Photo: Michael Strano) |
A zinc-air battery captures oxygen from the surrounding environment and oxidizes a tiny amount of zinc, a reaction that can generate 1 volt. This energy can then power a sensor or a small robotic arm that can lift and lower an object like insulin directly into a diabetic's cells.
While microscopic robots have long been proposed to deliver drugs to specific locations in the body, powering them has remained a difficult problem.
Many current designs are solar-powered, meaning they must be exposed to sunlight or controlled by lasers. But neither can penetrate deeply into the body because they must always be connected to a light source.
“If you want a microrobot to be able to get into spaces that humans can’t get into, it needs to have a higher level of autonomy,” said senior study author Michael Strano, a chemical engineer at MIT.
The battery is 0.01 millimeter in size.
It’s one of the smallest batteries ever invented. In 2022, researchers in Germany described a millimeter-sized battery that could fit on a microchip. Strano and his team’s battery is about 10 times smaller, measuring just 0.1 millimeters long and 0.002 millimeters thick. (The average human hair is about 0.1 millimeter thick.)
The battery has two components, a zinc electrode and a platinum electrode. They are embedded in a polymer called SU-8. When the zinc reacts with oxygen from the air, it creates an oxidation reaction that releases electrons. These electrons flow to the platinum electrode.
The batteries are made using a process called photolithography, which uses light-sensitive materials to transfer nanometer-sized patterns onto silicon wafers. This method is commonly used to manufacture semiconductors. It can quickly “print” 10,000 batteries onto each silicon wafer, Strano and his colleagues report in the journal Science Robotics.
In the new study, the researchers used a wire to connect these tiny batteries to microrobots that Strano’s lab also developed. They tested the battery’s ability to power a memristor.
They also used a super-thin battery to power a clock circuit that allows the robot to keep track of time, and to power two nanoscale sensors, one made of carbon nanotubes and the other of molybdenum disulfide. Microsensors like these could be dropped into pipes or other hard-to-reach places, the researchers said.
The team also used batteries to move an arm on one of the microrobots. These tiny motors could allow medical robots to work inside the body to deliver drugs at a specific time or place.
According to Live Science
Source: https://tienphong.vn/da-che-tao-pin-nho-bang-soi-toc-post1667082.tpo
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