Device Harnesses the Heartbeat to Power Biomedical Implants

A tiny device developed by engineers at Dartmouth College  could help harvest the heart's energy to power a wide-range of life-saving implantable devices. The Dartmouth researchers propose modifying pacemakers to harness the kinetic energy of the lead wire attached to the heart, converting it into electricity to continually charge the batteries. An added material — 'PVDF' thin polymer piezoelectric film, designed with porous structures — could help convert even small mechanical motion to electricity. The same device could also be used as a sensor for real-time patient monitoring.

Transcript

00:00:00 this is my design so we have the cantilever structure they self-existing pacemaker lead and this is the back of a moraine and here I'm not sure if you can see that internal there's the beautiful multiple beams inside so but using this smart structures and combined with the advanced material of the castle-like material like we're using the parse DVD acting film and we can harness the

00:00:28 energy from the heart so right now we're using the shaker to mimic the heart environment so I'm going to show you how this works alright so right now it's moves and we have the real-time you like to aqua generation which is to read out the outfit alright so you can see that there's periodic we like to up here from our devices