BEIJING – A research team has developed an implantable medical device thatcan harvest energy from heartbeats rather than batteries, according to arecent report published in the journal Nature Communications.
The cardiac pacemaker was designed on the basis of an implantabletriboelectric nanogenerator, which can achieve energy from heartbeats andconvert the energy to electricity for powering pacing pulses.
According to the study, the device and the body form an interconnectedsymbiotic system.
Both the energy source and stimulus target of the symbiotic device is thebody.
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Researchers from China and the United States tested the self-powered deviceand found that the energy harvested from each cardiac motion cycle is 0.495microjoule, which is higher than the required pacing threshold energy ofhumans (0.377 microjoule).
