Researchers have developed a hair-thin battery that can power robots no larger than the dot at the end of this sentence.
The zinc-air battery captures oxygen from its surroundings and oxidizes miniscule amounts of zinc, a reaction that can create up to 1 volt. This energy can then power things like sensors or a tiny robotic arm that can raise and lower to deliver a payload – say, insulin directly into the cells of a person with diabetes.
While cell-sized robots have long been proposed to deliver drugs to specific locations in the body, powering them has been tricky. Many current designs use solar power, which means they must either be exposed to sunlight or be controlled by a laser. But neither penetrates far into the body, limiting how far such robots, nicknamed “marionettes,” because they must remain connected to this light source like a puppet string, can travel.
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