Researchers suggested a way to develop a batteryless cardiac pacemaker that can harness the heart’s kinetic energy via piezotransducers.
Cardiac pacemakers are essential devices for biomedical applications. Currently, these pacemakers are battery-powered devices that use leads to maintain the heart beats. But batteries lead to infections , and moreover they are complex to install. Researchers across the globe are trying to realize a batteryless cardiac pacemaker which can harness sufficient power by scavenging heart kinetic energy.
Researchers from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University have indicated a way to harvest kinetic energy from the heart to power the lifesaving device. Their work will be presented at a 3-day conference in the paper “Mechanism on Buckled Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting for Batteryless Heartworn Pacemaker”.
“If the practical force of the heart is 0.5 newtons, the output power should be about 192 microwatts,” Yi Zhiran, from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said . “Therefore, for the commercial pacemaker, just about no less than 10 microwatts is sufficient for its normal work.”
The energy is harvested by attachment of the encapsulated structure of the pacemaker, creating buckled piezoelectric energy. This method of power supply, according to the researchers, varies greatly from current pacemaker designs.
“The key difference is the method of the power supply,” Yi said. “Current paradigm mainly relies on the battery, which limits the development of many implantable biomedical devices. But a batteryless pacemaker is feasible through using implantable energy harvesting technology, which provides a sustainable power supply method.”
