elbales

Technology Review
November/December 2007
Virus-Built Electronics
Assembling nanomaterials with the help of innocuous viruses could lead to threadlike batteries and photovoltaics that can be woven into clothing.
By Kevin Bullis

Angela Belcher leans in to watch as a machine presses down slowly on the plunger of a syringe, injecting a billion harmless viruses into a clear liquid. Instead of diffusing into the solution as they escape the needle, the viruses cling together, forming a wispy white fiber that's several centimeters long and about as strong as a strand of nylon. A gradu ate student, Chung-Yi Chiang, fishes it out with a pair of tweezers. Then he holds it up to an ultra violet light, and the fiber begins to glow bright red.

In producing this novel fiber, the researchers have demonstrated a completely new way of making nanomaterials, one that uses viruses as microscopic building blocks.

That? Is really cool.