Efficient imitation of nature of course at nanoscale, like the researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have come up with a synthesis process, which they say is close to nature and is less expensive than the conventional method. They have tailored an artificial virus, the M13 viral gene, to form a template for a piezoelectric material, barium titanate (BaTiO3). They envision fabricating a high efficiency nanogenerator from the piezoelectric material using the M13 viral gene.
This, however, is not the first time an artificial virus is employed to perform the self-assembly of devices. Angela Belcher, a materials scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been working on breeding microbes to assemble nanometer-scale structures that could be used in circuits.
Nevertheless, nanogenerator fabricated by virus-templated BTO nanostructure is highly stable and suitable for energy harvesting at the nanoscale.
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