How nanograss works?

Answer 1

You won't find this grass in your yard -- its blades are roughly a thousand times thinner than a human hair. Scientists at Lucent Technologies are controlling the behavior of tiny liquid droplets by applying electrical charges to specially-engineered silicon surfaces called nano-grass. Thomas Krupenkin, a physicist at Lucent, explains how nano-grass is being used to create a battery that wouldn't degrade over time: "You have the nano-grass and you have a liquid sitting on the tips of nano-grass. An electrode, which sits on the bottom of nano-grass, is separated from the liquid�in order for the battery to work you have to have the electrode and electrolyte touching each other, because only this way you can have a chemical reaction. Here, they are not touching each other so there is no chemical reaction. And as a result, the battery does not degrade with time whatsoever. However, if you drive the liquid down, it starts wetting the bottom of the structure and now you have a direct contact. Now your chemical reaction starts working and your battery starts producing current." The researchers hope to have the nano-batteries on the market within three years.