A team of researchers from the University of Oxford found that the natural movement of bacteria could be harnessed to accumulate and activate tiny «wind farms» on Smartphones.
The researchers explained in the journal Science Advances how they used computer to demonstrate that the phenomenon of random spreading of dense active matter that bacteria can organize can spin cylindrical rotors and provide a stable and reliable source of electrical energy.
The author Dr. Tyler Shendruk, a colleague of EMBO at the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and his collaborators, say that these microscopic biological energy-producing factories could eventually become extremely fine machines for microscopic use. Devices made by humans that are self-assembling and self-powered – everything from optical switches to microphones for Smartphone.
” A possible way to generate microscopic amounts of energy for microdevices could be to collect them directly from biological systems, such as bacteria” said Dr. Shendruk. Bacterial growth is usually very disorganized on its own to produce any kind of substantial energy. Therefore, when a single rotor was introduced during the experiments, it was ineffective and was simply repelled by the bacteria.
However, the researchers developed a special lattice of 64 micro-rotors and as the bacteria gathered around, it spontaneously organized in such a way that the neighboring channels began to rotate in opposite directions – a simple wind-farm-type structural organization.
Dr Amin Doostmohammadi, from the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, said: "The ability to extract even a small amount of mechanical work from these biological systems is valuable, because they do not require input power and use internal biochemical processes to move. At microscales, our simulations show that the flow generated by biological assemblies is capable of being reorganised in such a way as to generate a persistent mechanical force to rotate an array of microrotors."
