Electric eel is truly an amazing creature. When naturalists first encountered it in the 18th century, they did not even immediately believe that this fish inflicted an electric shock on its victims. However, against the facts you will not trample. And now, two and a half centuries later, scientists were inspired by electric eel in order to create a fundamentally new battery that could be used in the future in wearable electronics, as well as in the manufacture of "smart clothes."
Electric organs occupy about 4/5 of the entire length of the eel body. This fish is able to generate a discharge voltage of up to 1300 volts and a current of up to 1 ampere. The positive charge is in the front of the body, and the negative charge is in the back. Electric organs are used by eels to protect against enemies, as well as to immobilize the victims, who eat eels. These are mostly small-sized fish, although such an electric shock is quite capable of stunning even a horse. Among all representatives of the fauna, only electric eels and stingrays can produce such force. Such a charge can paralyze and even kill a person.
The electric organs of eels consist of numerous stacked electric plates, which are modified and flattened muscle, nerve and glandular cells. A potential difference is generated between the membranes of these cells. An eel has 70 horizontally placed columns of 6000 plates in each. The plates in each column are connected in series, and the electric columns between each other - in parallel.
In the likeness of electric eels, scientists from Shanghai Fudan University have created elastic fibers that can be woven into clothing or used as a power source for wearable electronics. These fibers produce enough energy to power light sources or electronic gadgets. This is not the first time that researchers find their inspiration in wildlife, but from this the results of their experiments do not look less impressive.
The resulting fibers are a kind of capacitor, which can release energy much faster than traditional batteries, but their capacity is extremely small. The first fiber samples were obtained by wrapping a sheet of carbon nanotubes around a 500 micron thick rubber rod. Nanotubes do not completely cover the rubber core, exposing its surface with a certain pitch. Due to this, the fiber consists of electrically conductive and insulating segments. The resulting fibers, the researchers covered with a conductive electrolyte gel.
The greater the number of consecutive conductive and insulating segments includes fiber, the greater the voltage it is able to generate. For example, a fiber length of 12 meters can create a voltage of about 1000 volts, as the researchers reported in their publication in the journal another January 14th. Previous attempts to reproduce the tissues of electric eels assumed the use of metal wires as cores, so the resulting fibers were not flexible enough to be widely used in industry.
Fibers based on rubber cores are quite suitable for the creation of fundamentally new materials, such as elastic fabric with batteries inserted into it. During the research, scientists have already managed to create a bracelet that independently fed an electronic watch, as well as a t-shirt that provided energy for the 57 LEDs built into it. In the future, such technology may well become an integral part of our life. In the meantime, it remains only to wait and hope that scientists will succeed in finding investors for the earliest possible withdrawal of their invention to the market.
The article is based on materials .
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