SCIENTIFIC EDUCATIONAL CENTER science idea

Russian scientists have presented a new technology that promises to become one of the promising areas of renewable green energy of the future. The lightweight and compact battery, charged from cyanobacteria, is suitable for powering a wide variety of types of electronics: from gadgets to the most complex industrial equipment. The authors of the project were young specialists from the CMID Engineering Center and the Department of Micro- and Nanoelectronics (MNE) of LETI with the participation of colleagues from the Resource Center of St. Petersburg University "Cultivation of microorganisms". The new compact battery is a multi-layered structure. It is based on a square substrate made of ordinary polypropylene. The thickness of the substrate is 1 mm, and its size is approximately comparable to the size of a matchbox. The arrangement of the elements on the device is distributed using a special stencil. Using inkjet printing methods, carbon nanotubes are applied to the substrate (as part of a drop of special ink), thus forming future electrodes of energy cells. To increase the output characteristics, an additional material was also used at the anode: hydrophilic carbon fabric. This modification allows you to apply more cyanobacteria: thus, one part of them ends up on the surface, and the other penetrates inside. The resulting porous structure can be saturated with water, which is consumed by cyanobacteria familiar to many (in this case, the genus Synechocystis), forming a thin film of the next layer of the "sandwich". Bacteria are applied to the surface of the device using inkjet printing methods: using a few drops of water, in which microorganisms live. By connecting a load of 39 kOhm to such a multilayer system, scientists were able to obtain electrical energy. Such an energy source is very promising, because attempts have long been made in the world to replace traditional oil, gas and coal, which are used everywhere today to heat water and, accordingly, generate electricity. Bacterial energy, along with other alternative sources (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.), is considered environmentally friendly. For a new battery to work autonomously for several hours, only light and water are required. Sofia Zenkova, a graduate of the Faculty of Electronics of St. Petersburg State Technical University "LETI", told the correspondent of "Scientific Russia" about the new technology. "Cyanobacteria are living organisms living in an aquatic environment. They get nourished and give away their electrons thanks to light, solar energy. In our experiment, we used an artificial light source. In order to nourish cyanobacteria, it took us from ten minutes to half an hour. We saturated and transferred electrons using an electrolyte ― a special closing hydrogel surface. <...> Of course, the current would not appear just like that: we connected our battery to a certain load, at 39 kOhm. As a result, after many repetitions, we got a voltage of 0.4 V, using 25 µl of cyanobacteria. <...> We created one battery, but our further research will be carried out using several structures and connecting several cells in a row," said Sofya Zenkova.

PHOTO: Application of cyanobacteria to an energy cell. Sofya Zenkova / SPbSETU "LETI".

The information is taken from the portal "Scientific Russia" (https://scientificrussia.ru /)