‘Electric Eel’ OPTICAL FIBER

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What is Electric Eel optical fiber? A new type of fiber that is inspired from electricity generating cells in ‘Electric Eel’ that could power wearable devices.

I am going to talk about…. What is an ‘Electric Eel’? How the ‘Electric Eel’ generates electricity? How ‘Electric Eel' fibers could power wearable tech? Applications of ‘Electric Eel’ Fiber.

What is an Electric Eel? It is a fish that generates electric shock about 600 volts. This famous freshwater predators get their name from the high electric charge they can generate to stun prey and prevent predators. They live in the cloudy streams and ponds of the Amazon and Orinoco Basins of south America , feeding mainly on fish, but also amphibians and even birds and small mammals. As air-breathers, they must come to the surface frequently. They also have poor eyesight, but can emit a low-level charge, less than 10 volts, which they use like radar to navigate and locate prey. Human deaths from electric eels are extremely rare. However, multiple shocks can cause of heart failure, and people have been known to drown on surface of pond after a stunning jolt.

Electric Eel

How the ‘Electric Eel’ generates electricity?

Electricity producing organs

At rest the ions In EEL each electrogenic cells carries a negative charge of a little less than 100 millivolts on its outside compared to its inside.

During pulses When the command signal arrives, the nerve terminal releases a minute puff of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter. This creates a transient path with low electrical resistance connecting the inside and the outside of one side of the cell. Thus, each cell behaves like a battery with the activated side carrying a negative charge and the opposite side a positive one.

Inside the Organ Because the cells are oriented inside the electric organ like a series of batteries piled into a flashlight, the current generated by an activated cell "shocks" any inactive neighbor into action, setting off an avalanche of activation that runs its course in just two milliseconds or so. This practically simultaneous start-up creates a short-lived current flowing along the eel's body.

At the end If the eel lived in air, the current could be as high as one ampere, turning the creature's body into the equivalent of a 500-volt battery. But eels live in water, which provides additional outlets for the current. They thus generate a larger voltage, but a divided, and therefore diminished, current.

How ‘Electric Eel' fibers could power wearable tech? Sun and his colleagues wanted to harness the power of the electric eel in a man-made material. To do so, they created fibers that mimicked the shocking creature’s ability to stack up tiny voltage-producing cells in concert. These fibers are capacitors, meaning they alternate pairs of electrical conductors and electrical insulators, or materials that block the flow of electricity. Capacitors store electric charge on the surfaces of the conductors, and can capture and release energy much more quickly than batteries can, although they usually store less energy than batteries do.

Contd.. The scientists fabricated the capacitors by first wrapping sheets of Carbon nanotubes around elastic rubber fibers 500 microns wide, or about five times the average width of a human hair . Carbon nanotubes are pipes only nanometers, or billionths of a meter, in diameter that possess remarkable electrical and mechanical properties. The researchers made sure that the electrically conductive carbon nanotube sheets did not completely cover the electrically insulating rubber. Instead, there were gaps where the insulating rubber was exposed. Such gaps are key, because capacitors consist of both conductive and insulating units. Then, the scientists applied patches of electrically conductive electrolyte gel onto these fibers. The pattern of patches the researchers used converted the fibers into capacitors.

Contd. The more alternating segments of electrically conductive nanotube sheets and electrically insulating rubber gaps a fiber had, the greater the voltage it could generate. A fiber about 39 feet (12 meters) long could generate 1,000 volts, the researchers reported online January 14 in the Journal Advanced Materials. Previous research also sought to mimic electric eels by connecting many electrocyte like units together. However, those units were impractical because they were strung together with metal wires, and generally had poor flexibility, the researchers said. This new device instead connected all of its electrocyte like units together on a single fiber.

Advantages……. The elastic fibers could stretch up to 70 percent more than their usual length without losing their electrical or structural properties, the researchers said. The team also showed that the fibers could be woven together with conventional elastic fibers to create fabric that could be incorporated into clothes. The researchers suggested that the eely fibers could help power miniature electronic devices. For example, in experiments, they created energy wristbands to power electronic watches, and wove fibers into t-shirts to power 57 light-emitting diodes (LEDs).  In the future, these energy fibers "might be incorporated into our daily clothes to power our wearable devices , such as the apple watch and google glass," sun said.

Applications….. In defense Field, In high Technology, In Medical field, Etc.

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Thanks Any Questions…????????