Really, really small batteries

It's too small to be seen with the naked eye, but it could be the biggest scientific leap of the 21st century. <br/><br/>Nanotechnology is a buzzword you'll be hearing a lot in the near future.

Monday, May 9th 2005, 10:27 am

By: News On 6

It's too small to be seen with the naked eye, but it could be the biggest scientific leap of the 21st century.

Nanotechnology is a buzzword you'll be hearing a lot in the near future. Much of it involves little, tiny machines, but like any machine, they need a power source.

As News on 6 reporter Steve Berg explains, the University of Tulsa has one.

The atomic force microscope they use to manipulate nano-batteries at the University of Tulsa is in a fairly small room, but that's okay, they're dealing with a battery that's just 20-billionths of a meter, or 20 nanometers. "It's almost unfathomable even to us." While it's easy to forget, Dr. Dale Teeters says even a microscopic machine needs energy. "These devices that are going to be made are going to need power sources if they want to function autonomously on their own."

Business student Chris Guglielmo's student project is to sell investors on the idea of nano-batteries. "Probably the hardest thing to explain is how small we're actually talking about."

How small? An ant is 5-million nanometers across. A human hair about 100,000 nanometers across. The head of a pin, more than a million nanometers. A nano-battery is just 200 nanometers.

The uses are mind-boggling. Dr Dale Teeters: "I like to give the example of the 60's science fiction film Fantastic Voyage. They shrink a submarine to a very tiny size and inject into the bloodstream and the submarine goes to the site of an injury."

Student Tyler Beaty is also on the team and says machines as small as a millimeter already exist. "There's actually a German company out there with a submarine, with a working motor and propeller and everything and a storage compartment to deliver drugs, but it doesn't have a power source."

Medicine is just one application. Nano-techology could create laptops with the power of a whole server. Or smart dust, which could be sprinkled on a bag to detect explosives. Tiny machines could be a huge industry. Chris Guglielmo: "Oklahoma used to be an energy capital of the world and we believe with this technology, it once again can be, because it's just that great of a technology."

Dr Dale Teeters: "I think we're only limited by our imagination."