Virus can generate electricity

Virus can generate electricity,charge your 

smartphones and tablets

Move over wireless, induction chargers here comes a virus which can generate electric current. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to generate power using harmless viruses that convert mechanical energy into electricity. The team succeeded in powering an LCD screen using the power generated by the virus.

How it works?
The scientists coated a postage stamp-sized electrode with specially engineered viruses M13. When someone taps on this electrodes the viruses convert the force of the tap into an electric charge.

During the initial tests the electrode produced  up to six nanoamperes of current and 400 millivolts of potential when tapped, which is about a quarter the voltage of a AAA battery. That much current was enough to power the display and show number 1 on it.

You will never run out of batteries as being a virus, M13 replicates itself by the millions within hours, so it continues to 'create' more batteries. The virus is safe for humans as it only attacks bacteria and is found to be benign to people.

The team of scientists which conducted this research compries of Seung-Wuk Lee, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and a UC Berkeley associate professor of bioengineering, Ramamoorthy Ramesh, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and a professor of materials sciences, engineering, and physics at UC Berkeley; and Byung Yang Lee of Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division.

"More research is needed, but our work is a promising first step toward the development of personal power generators, actuators for use in nano-devices, and other devices based on viral electronics," says Seung-Wuk Lee, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and a UC Berkeley associate professor of bioengineering.

So your phone is running out of battery? Tap it!