A TEAM of scientists have created a battery system that can be implanted into the body and continuously produce electricity.
The ground-breaking design from the experts at China’s Tianjin University of Technology is set to revolutionise the health industry.
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Implantable batteries and electronics have completely transformed the health industry over the years, with pacemakers and neurostimulators revolutionising how doctors deal with pain.
But these batteries often run low and need replacing, and, until now, the only way to do that was through a dangerous surgery.
The latest in medical tech however, has seen the development of an implantable battery that runs on the body’s supply of oxygen.
One of the professors on the team, Xizheng Liu, said that using oxygen was the most obvious source for an infinite battery.
Liu said: “When you think about it, oxygen is the source of our life.
“If we can leverage the continuous supply of oxygen in the body, battery life won’t be limited by the finite materials within conventional batteries.”
So, with a team of researchers, Liu set out to build a battery that could react with the body’s oxygen to create electricity.
The research team created battery electrodes out of a sodium based alloy, due to the fact it is already widely present throughout the human body and is also being developed for use in rechargeable batteries.
Gold was chosen to be the catalytic cathode due to its use in previous metal-air batteries for the oxygen reduction reaction.
The team also chose to use nanoporous gold – which has small pores, thousands of times smaller than the width of a single strand of hair.
The researchers said that, although all of these compounds are already biocompatible, they also encased it with a thin, flexible polymer film.
With all of the protections in place, the gold cathode can freely draw in oxygen from bodily fluids, which will then react with the sodium electrodes in the battery.
The chemical reaction that takes place then fuels the necessary electrochemical reactions in the battery, and a constant stream of electricity is generated as a consequence.
To test their revolutionary creation, the researchers planted the battery into several lab rats.
The researchers revealed that, after two weeks of testing, the rats did not experience any adverse health effects, and confirmed that the electricity output was stable.
Although the voltage produced was around 1.3 to 1.4 volts, which just falls short of the current power generated by medical devices, the experts believe it bodes well for the future of their battery.
Liu did mention that the electricity output was unstable immediately after the devices were implanted, but that this soon self-regulated.
The battery’s performance had been impacted due to the fact that it was aiding the healing process dramatically.
Liu said: “It turned out we had to give the wound time to heal, for blood vessels to regenerate around the battery and supply oxygen, before the battery could provide stable electricity.
“This is a surprising and interesting finding because it means that the battery can help monitor wound healing.”
The breakthrough follows ground-breaking developments in brain chips – such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which hopes to restore autonomy to those with medical needs.
Musk reposted a Neuralink live stream on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday and captioned the 9-minute video, “Livestream of @Neuralink demonstrating ‘Telepathy’ – controlling a computer and playing video games just by thinking.”
In the clip, 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh sat next to a Neuralink engineer, who introduced Arbaugh as the “first-ever user of the Neuralink device.”
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Arbaugh, a quadriplegic, explained that a “freak diving accident” eight years ago dislocated two of his vertebrae, causing him to be paralyzed from the neck down.
Neuralink’s mission is to restore autonomy to individuals who have “unmet medical needs” with a vision to “unlock human potential” in the future, the company has said.
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