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Nanobatteries Power Artificial Eyes

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the looking-into-the-future dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "A new U.S. research center, the National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors, has been opened to promote new ideas in the field of nanomedicine. For example, a team of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is developing a nano-size battery to be implanted in the eye to power artificial retina. But this center will also design and build 'nanomedical devices based on natural and synthetic ion transporters -- proteins that control ion motion across the membranes of every living cell.'"

2 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Acceptance or Rejection by the Body by reporter · · Score: 4, Insightful
    These advances in artifical retina and the batteries to power them are amazing, but scientists rarely talk about how the human body would react to these foreign objects. Will the body accept these objects or attempt to fight them by forming clots or by summoning a white-cell army to attack them?

    In the case of breast enhancements, the body forms scar tissue around the silicone implants.

    In the case of artifical hearts, the patients faces the serious risk of blood clotting. The blood clots can flow into the brain and cause a stroke.

    Advances in science are great, but we've "just gotta know its limitations".

  2. New Steam Powered Eyes! by nick_davison · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OK, so my first thought, upon reading this...

    The human body has been doing remarkably well at powering itself, without batteries, for millenia (with the one exception on Monday mornings).

    Why do we need "nano" batteries? If we're down to the point of building things at an atomic level, shouldn't we be at the point where we a) build things with the same (or at least similar) efficiency as the body had in the first place and b) thus use the same power supply the part we're replacing used?

    Whilst it's really cool we're building nano-batteries, it sounds more like a lab cashing in on the exciting buzz technology of the moment to solve a problem rather than looking at the problem that actually needs solving and finding the right solution for it.

    It makes me wonder, did people 150 years ago try getting seed captial for equally ridiculous concepts involving the new buzz tech of steam? Actually, thinking about it, I know they did - and we laugh at the craziness of the inventors who anounced they were going to invent steam powered underpants or whatever back then. Makes me wonder how much the people of 150 years in the future will smack their heads and laugh at the ridiculous concepts for exploiting nano-tech we're coming up with now, when far more obvious solutions were staring us in the face.