Bid farewell to that brick on the back of your laptop. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are developing a new breed of lithium-ion battery that’s razor-thin, transparent and more potent than current power cells. “It looks like a piece of tape,” says Angela Belcher, the MIT materials scientist leading the effort.

A light, see-through battery could open the door to less cumbersome computers, MP3 players and other gadgets. “You could laminate on the battery just like you would a picture,” says Belcher, who made this magazine’s Brilliant 10 list in 2002.

The secret to its slimness—weird alert—is a virus called M13. Most batteries stores energy in electrodes made of bulky carbon or metal. To cut weight and increase power, Belcher genetically engineered the harmless viruses to attract metal ions and then bathed them in a solution of cobalt oxide and gold, metals known for their superior energy-storage properties. Coating the viruses onto a charged polymer film created an electrode 40 times as thin as a human hair. Tests conducted earlier this year showed that it stored three times the energy of a conventional electrode. Expect the technology to go commercial within five years. —Michael Stroh

Via: Popular Science