UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, CALIFORNIA, USA. A researcher has discovered that microbes around us can actually be a good source of clean energy. The study also suggests that some of the oldest microorganisms were able to effectively move electrons around even before humans showed up on Earth.
Scientists were able to figure out that garden-variety anaerobic bacteria can actually move electrons around which causes a small amount of electrical charge each time. However, they were not able to fully understand how the electrical charges were produced by such tiny organisms.
That is when Mohamed El-Naggar of the University of Southern California stepped into the scene about 3 years ago when he discovered how the bacteria grow protein nanowires to move electrons around. He is currently working with his team in his lab to try and harness the metabolism of the microbes to build new nanostructures and to power electrical devices with it. That way, they could build semiconductors for clean-energy technologies.
In the near future, we could actually benefit from this development with the use of clean-energy technologies such as solar cells to power our homes. It is an important scientific breakthrough that will become very beneficial to the next generations to come.
| Invention | Microbe-Building Semiconductor |
|---|---|
| Organization | University of Southern California, California, USA |
| Researcher | Mohamed El-Naggar |
| Field(s) | Clean Energy, Green Energy, Renewable Energy, Microbes, Nanotechnology |
| Further Information | POPSCI |
