Biological Nano-Wire

Nanotechnology is in its full bloom since a few years and the designs and practical applications get increasingly clever. Scientists working for the US Department of Energy now discovered a way to transmit electrical current via bacteria.


image appears courtesy of New Scientist

Bacteria can be fooled into producing conductive nano-fibres that may then be used as tiny electronic connectors.
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Tiny hair-like surface appendages, known as "pili", are used by bacteria to connect to host tissue and reproduce with other bacteria of the same species. Pili are made of protein and are usually non-conductive.

But the patented idea is to grow a bug strain called Geobacter sulfurreducens using a nutrient that contains particles of insoluble ferric oxide. The resulting bacteria should sprout pili that are highly conductive. So growing the bacteria in lines over an absorptive substrate would create a circuit of biological nano-wires.

Alternatively, the bacteria could be deposited on top of a chip surface and the pili detached and then manoeuvred into position between nano-components. The inventors also hope to genetically modify bacteria to create pili with specific electrical characteristics.

Full patent here.

Foldable Smart Gadgets

This patent by Sony came to my attention the other day. The engineers are attempting to design components of handheld devices which can be folded when they're not used. As of now, this is done via rather crude mechanical principles and the smaller you are supposed to fold a device, the more joints and angles you need. The idea below could sort this problem out:

"The boffins at Sony’s Tokyo labs are working on a clever way to get bulky electronic devices into small pockets. Their plan is to create handheld computers, phones and portable games consoles that fold up for carrying and then become rigid for use.

The body and screen of folding gadgets would be made from a flexible polymer containing conductive rubber bracing struts filled with a gel of aluminosilicate particles suspended in silicone oil.

When a current is passed through the struts, the particles clump together and harden the gel, making the gadget solid enough to use. Sony has found that it would take very little power to make such a folding device harden, so the drain on its battery should be low. The company's patent adds that the transition from soft to hard takes just milliseconds. It suggests that the same technique could even be used in a video game controller to make it jolt or change shape in response to on-screen action.

Read the full patent here."