Powering Devices within the Body
I'm new, so if this is already here, my bad.
Even simple devices within the body seem hard to power. Is there anything that is simple to implant that is easy to recharge and replace (pace-maker batteries are neither)? I'm thinking: EM induction, piezoelectric materials, blood sugar (or other chemicals).
Even simple devices within the body seem hard to power. Is there anything that is simple to implant that is easy to recharge and replace (pace-maker batteries are neither)? I'm thinking: EM induction, piezoelectric materials, blood sugar (or other chemicals).
Comments
ThomasEgi has also been working on this a while ago:
@SixEcho: I figured that out too, but have no results, cause I haven't implanted it yet. My mind is stuck on the issue of the thing hanging out, how would you fixate it? Would that not be too limitating in terms of sports etc...?
If you have a good way, I'll give it a try, could also implant a usb storage like that... Thought's?
For a long bone, like the femur or humerus, would you attach the receiving end of the TRS jack perpendicular to the bone with something similar to normal ITAPs? Or would it be better to attach pins to the bone, still sub-dermal and mount the receiving end slightly parallel to the bone, but with enough angle to be exposed on the outside?
I'm thinking of a way to minimize the amount of muscle interrupted.
dentists use for dental implants, though much shorter, and narrower,
just a mount for an angled jack.
Your right about the jack, too. It would have to be rather dainty in order to remain painless.
On the topic of glucose cells, I have not seen one yet. Could you point me in the right direction?
The dental implant only appealed to me because of the titanium/bone fusion; could you implant a device into the mandible and still have audible vibrations that aren't interrupted?
A bit off topic, but does anyone know any place that does parylene coating?
@SixEcho: "The important part of that ITAP link was how they constructed the transdermal section." Can you elaborate on this please? I took a quick look at the paper, but it seemed that this can not be done at home. Did you try to get your hands on one of those PTFE transdermals? That small bit is enclosed by tissue right? I can't see how this wouldn't get rejected on let's say, my forearm...
i havnt been able to find much about what sort of ranges you would be looking at, but i assume its pretty small??
a regular wristwatch battery holds about 0.1 to 0.2 Wh worth of energy, and it usualy runs years on that.
a very low power implant with a microcontroller, some sensors and input/output to some nerves would run between a couple of days and maybe 2 weeks on the same battery.
as people bring up implants with stuff like vibration motors up every now and then, such a thing would last only a few hours on the same battery.
kinetic charging works well, but the output is very minimal and, in best case, could only keep the lowest-power implants running at all. ( such as a pacemaker). everything that's smarter , requires more power.
as for inductive charging: pretty straight forward. low complexity, cheap, robust, well known and delivers a good amount of energy, enough to recharge a battery in a few hours. all you need to do is roughly align the 2 transmitter coils. the rotation against each other is not that critical. if you can keep it within +-45 degrees you are perfectly good. distance mainly depends on the coils but even with the most simple equipment i was able to get over 4 or 5cm without trouble.
charging a battery within a few hours, and running 1 to 2 weeks on it is pretty decent.
transdermal is a lot harder to pull off. and the only advantage is that you could deliver more power over it than with inductive charging.
we already covered kinetic powering, which might be an option for implants that go into the lower leg, but they have their issues too.
another low-power option is solar charging, but i haven't looked to much into that. it's more like a trickle charge.
for now. best way we have at hands is inductive charging,
The problem is the tendency of the skin to retreat from a transdermal, which is what the ITAP geometry is supposed to overcome, no? I've come across a paper trying to solve that problem with a transdermal geometry based on deer antlers, I'll see if I can dig it up.