A battery that you don’t have to charge, but only feeds? Swiss researchers have achieved exactly that with their 3D printed mushroom battery. The living battery could power sensors for agriculture or research in remote areas. Once its work is done, it resolves itself from within.
Strictly speaking, the mushroom battery is a microbial fuel cell, as the Swiss Federal Materials Testing and Research Institute Empa announced on Thursday. It uses the metabolism of two different types of fungi to generate electricity. At the anode, the negative pole of the cell, a yeast fungus is fed with sugar. When it processes these nutrients, electrons are released. On the other side of the cell, a white rot fungus produces an enzyme that captures the electrons and carries them out of the cell.
Biodegradable
The battery is manufactured using a 3D printer. For this purpose, the fungal cells are mixed with the printing ink. If the battery is dry, it will not produce electricity. It is activated by adding water and nutrients. The biggest advantage of the mushroom battery is that, unlike conventional batteries, it is not only completely non-toxic, but also biodegradable.
The researchers led by Carolina Reyes presented the battery in a study in the journal “ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering”. Now the researchers want to make the mushroom battery more powerful and durable, as they explain in the statement. They also want to look for other types of fungi that are suitable as electricity suppliers.
Source: Krone
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