The energy for tomorrow’s miniature electronic devices could come from tiny microbatteries about half the size of a human cell, and built with viruses, according to engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

MIT engineers have developed a way to create and install such microbatteries – which could one day power a range of miniature devices, from labs-on-a-chip to implantable medical sensors – by stamping them onto a variety of surfaces.

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By adapting existing cochlear ear implant technology to perceive light rather than sound, two Sydney-based scientists have developed a ‘cheap and safe’ bionic eye to restore basic vision to people going blind.

Professor Minas Coroneo and Dr Vivek Chowdhury say the prosthesis should cost little more than the £10,000 of a cochlear hearing device.

Professor Coroneo explained: “We are using a bionic ear to make a bionic eye.”

While other researchers are working on implanting electrodes on the retina (intraocular), the cochlear device puts electrodes on the outer wall of the eye (extraocular).

Patients will wear glasses mounted with a tiny camera that sends images to electrodes in the eye.

Using a specially-coated form of clothing material Goretex, scientists at Monash University have developed an electrically-generated fuel cell which could make the next generation of hybrid cars more reliable and cheaper to build.

The team of Monash scientists have designed and tested an air-electrode, where a fine layer – just 0.4 of a micron thick, or about 100 times thinner than a human hair – of highly conductive plastic is depositied on the breathable fabric. The conductive plastic acts as both the fuel cell electrode and catalyst.

Dr Bjorn Winther-Jensen, Monash University, explained: “The same way as waste vapour is drawn out of this material to make hikers more comfortable and less prone to hypothermia, so it is able the ‘breathe’ oxygen into our fuel cell and into contact with the conductive plastic.”

Professor Doug MacFarlane, Monash University, continued: “The benefits for the motoring industry and for motorists are that the new design removes the need for platinum, which acts as the catalyst and is currently central to the manufacturing process.

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Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT) have developed a way of storing solar energy for use when the sun isn’t shining.

In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet’s energy needs for one year. However, solar power is usually a day-time only energy source because storing extra solar energy for later is prohibitively and grossly inefficient.

Drawing on the process of photosynthesis, Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, Daniel Nocera, and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed a process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen can be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power homes, or electric cars, day or night.

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An associate professor from the University of Florida has developed a ‘wingless electromagnetic air vehicle’ (WEAV), a small, circular spinning aircraft reminiscent of the spaceships seen in films.

The prototype proposed by Subrata Roy, is less than six inches in diameter, and efficient enough to be powered by on-board batteries along with magnetohydrodynamics, or the force created when a current or a magnetic field is passed through a conducting fluid. In the case of the WEAV aircraft, the conducting fluid will be created by electrodes that cover each of the vehicle’s surfaces and ionise the surrounding air into plasma.

The force created by passing an electrical current through this plasma pushes around the surrounding air, and that swirling air creates lift and momentum and provides stability against wind gusts. In order to maximise the area of contact between air and vehicle, the WEAV design is partially hollow and continuously curved.

The WEAV has no moving parts, such as propellers or jet engines, and so is expected to be more reliable. This design also allows the WEAV to hover and take off vertically.

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Companies and research institutes are developing a vest that will read muscle tension and deduce stress levels at any given time, as part of the EU-funded CONTEXT project.

‘Wearable electronics’ are at the core of the vest. Sensors woven into fabric register the electrical excitation of muscle fibres, while thin conducting metallic fibres pass the signals to an electronic analysis system.

Human muscle tension changes with stress levels – the greater the stress, the more likely the muscles are to produce a synchronous twitching effect. Although this is barely perceptible, the electrodes register the change.

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Engineers in Northern Ireland have developed a ‘no-wires’ way for doctors to monitor their patients hearts and other vital signs.

The device developed by engineers from Ulster University’s Sensor Technology + Devices (ST+D) division, consists of a disposable adhesive electrode patch worn on the patient’s chest.

When the patient is hospitalised, information gathered by the device such as ECG, body temperature, respiration rate and the percentage of oxygen saturation in the blood, is transmitted to a doctor via the hospital’s wireless communications system from distances of up to 10m. Once discharged, the patient is given a small, portable handset which uses GPRS to pick up signals from the patch and transmit the data back to a doctor’s PC using a wireless internet connection.

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Researchers at The University of Manchester have produced tiny liquid crystal devices with electrodes made from graphene.

Dr Kostya Novoselov, from the Manchester research team, explained: “Graphene is only one atom thick, optically transparent, chemically inert, and an excellent conductor.

“These properties seem to make this material an excellent candidate for applications in various electro-optical devices that require conducting but transparent thin films. We believe graphene should improve the durability and simplify the technology of potential electronic devices that interact with light.”

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