China – A team of scientists has invented a battery system that can be implanted in the body and produces electricity continuously, which may revolutionize the world of medical industries.
Implantable batteries and electronics have radically transformed the medical industry over the years, with pacemakers and neurostimulators revolutionizing how doctors deal with pain.
But these batteries often run out and need to be replaced, and until now, the only way to do that was to undergo serious surgery.
However, the latest medical technology has seen the development of an implantable battery by scientists at Tianjin University of Technology in China that supplies the body with oxygen.
Xishang Liu, one of the professors supervising the development of the new battery, said that the use of oxygen is the most obvious source of the infinite battery.
“When you think about it, oxygen is our source of life,” Liu added. “If we could take advantage of the body’s continuous supply of oxygen, battery life would no longer be limited by the limited materials found in conventional batteries.”
Liu, along with a team of scientists, set out to build a battery that can interact with oxygen in the body to generate electricity.
The research team created battery electrodes from a sodium-based alloy, given that it is already widely found throughout the human body and is also being developed for use in rechargeable batteries.
Gold was chosen as the catalytic cathode because of its use in metal air batteries prior to the oxygen reduction reaction.
The team also chose to use nanoporous gold, which contains tiny pores, thousands of times smaller than the width of a single hair strand.
The scientists said that although all of these compounds are already biocompatible, they have also coated them in a thin, flexible polymer layer.
With all the protections in place, the gold cathode can freely draw oxygen from body fluids, which will then react with the sodium electrodes in the battery.
The chemical reaction that then occurs fuels the necessary electrochemical reactions in the battery, and a continuous current of electricity is generated as a result.
To test their revolutionary innovation, the scientists implanted the battery in several laboratory mice. They found that after two weeks of testing, the mice experienced no adverse health effects, and they confirmed that electricity production was stable.
Although the output voltage was about 1.3 to 1.4 volts, which is slightly lower than the current power generated by medical devices, experts believe it bodes well for the future of their batteries.
Liu stated that the electricity production was unstable immediately after the devices were implanted, but it soon self-regulated.
The battery was a significant help in the healing process, as Liu explained: “It turned out that we had to give the wound time to heal, so that the blood vessels around the battery could regenerate and be supplied with oxygen, before the battery could provide stable electricity. “This is a surprising and interesting discovery because it means the battery could help monitor wound healing.”
Source: The Sun
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2024-03-29 01:44:35