Making Viruses Make Nanowires To Make Anodes For Batteries

摘要

Four of the current Hot Ten papers relate to nano chemistry: #1 and #7 are about gold nanorods and #2 is about zinc oxide nanowires. However, it is paper #3 which is the most innovative, reporting how cobalt oxide (CO3O4) nanowires have been assembled with the help of a virus. The paper comes from a team headed by Angela Belcher of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. It also describes how these nanowires can form a monolayer which can act as the anode for an ultra-thin lithium ion battery. Not surprisingly, Belcher's work has attracted a lot of media attention. In 2004 she was rewarded with a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and in 2006 was named by Scientific American magazine as its Research Leader of the Year.