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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Bioinspiration may lead to better battery technology
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:02
	Publish Date:		2016-09-18 19:00:00
	Description:		A team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are bioinspired – that is, they’re finding inspiration from nature and biology to create synthetic materials for a range of problems. Bioengineer Phil Messersmith says while there’s particular interest in the medical field, it’s not exclusive. In fact, their work creating super-strong mollusk-inspired adhesives for fetal surgery, is also of interest to a group of battery technology scientists at the Berkeley Lab. "For lithium ion batteries, they need better binders for the particles – there’s huge swelling/de-swelling that happens when you charge and discharge one of these batteries and you have to have effective adhesion between the binder and these particles, otherwise they form cracks and the electrical pathway is interrupted. So, some of the adhesion from our mussel research can be implemented into this battery technology, so we’re doing that as well."
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