Myocardium as a charger
The pacemaker was powered from the heart
Alexey Timoshenko, "The Attic"
Chinese researchers have created a pacemaker that does not need to replace the power source: it receives electricity due to the contraction of the patient's heart. The device has been successfully tested — however, so far only on pigs.
Pacemakers monitor the heart rate and, if necessary, correct it. This makes it possible to effectively combat arrhythmias that can threaten the lives of patients, and today hundreds of thousands of pacemaker implantation operations are performed annually around the world, and among the elderly in developed countries, almost every fiftieth can have such a device. Pacemakers became the first mass implanted electronics, but the problem with their power supply has not yet been solved.
Arne Larson became the first person in history to have a pacemaker implanted in 1958. Due to battery discharge, he had to perform 26 operations, but Larson lived a very long life (1915-2001).
In the past, doctors and engineers tried to use even plutonium power sources, but this idea had to be abandoned — the massive turnover of radioactive material itself threatened problems even if the nuclear battery was reliably shielded. The improvement of chemical batteries has significantly extended the life of the pacemaker, but even one surgical operation in ten years is associated with unnecessary risks, and it would be good to do without it.
In an article by Li et al. Direct Powering a Real Cardiac Pacemaker by Natural Energy of a Heartbeat, published in ACS Nano, researchers from Shanghai described a piezoelectric power source capable of delivering a current of 15 microamps, which is quite enough for a pacemaker chip and maintaining a charge in case of heart stimulation.
A drawing from the ACS press release Powering a pacemaker with a patient's heartbeat.
The piezoelectric effect used by scientists is familiar to many from lighters, in which the compression of a special crystal is converted into an electric pulse giving a spark; a flexible plate with two piezoelectric elements was made to power the pacemaker.
The plate was placed near the heart of the experimental pig. Contractions of the heart led to periodic flexion and extension of the plate, compression and stretching of piezoelectric elements, and thus an electric current was generated. Experiments have shown that the power of the device is enough to operate a pacemaker without external recharging, so in the future it will be possible to create a similar device for humans.
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