The virus-powered battery

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have engineered a biological virus that could help make batteries three times more powerful than those used today.

The scientists used particles in a virus to build tiny electrodes that can produce power faster than lithium-ion batteries, which are found in most electronic devices.

The new battery technology could be used in devices such as MP3 players, mobile phones and potentially automobiles.

“It has some of the same capacity and energy power performance as the best commercially available state-of-the-art batteries,” said Angela Belcher, the lead scientist on the project.

“We could run an iPod on it for about three times as long as current iPod batteries. If we really scale it, it would be used in a car,” she said.