The Maharbiz Group at UC Berkeley has a long-term vision is to engineer devices and materials directly from living precursors – in other words biomimicry. First published a few years ago, the work has now found its way into NewScientist.
Inspired by the transport of water in plants, we resently presented a synthetic, microfabricated ‘leaf’ which can scavenge electrical power from evaporation-driven flow via a charge pump embedded in the ‘stem’. In the device, evaporation at the surface of the device produces flow in microfabricated vasculature. Continued at http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~maharbiz/Transpiration.html
Additional introductory info at http://www.inhabitat.com.