[cdg] Technology News - Power implant aims to run on body heat
- From: "Donny Duncan" <ravers_deelite@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <cdg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 19:04:17 -0500
Pulled from NewScientist (www.newscientist.com)
Power implant aims to run on body heat
Life-saving medical implants like pacemakers and defibrillators face a big
drawback: their batteries eventually run out. So every few years, patients need
surgery to have the batteries replaced.
Now a company in New York state is planning to tackle the problem by providing
patients with an implantable power source that recharges their implant's
batteries using electricity generated by the patient's own body heat.
By continuously recharging the batteries, it saves the patient from frequent
surgery. In some low power devices, it could even replace the batteries
altogether, making such operations unnecessary.
The "biothermal battery" under development by Biophan Technologies of West
Henrietta, will generate electricity using arrays of thousands of
thermoelectric generators built into an implantable chip. These generators
exploit the well-known thermocouple effect, in which a small voltage is
generated when two of the junctions between two dissimilar materials are kept
at different temperatures.
But Biophan is going to need a large number of thermocouples to generate the
power it needs. In the past, stacks of perhaps tens of thermocouples have been
used in some temperature sensors, but no-one has tried to build thousands of
them into one device, as Biophan will need to.
The company's chief executive Michael Wiener is confident his engineers can
build thermocouples just tens of micrometres across to do the job, using
unspecified microchip manufacturing technologies.
Read more here:
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/tech/article.jsp?id=99995091&sub=Hot%20Stories
Donny Duncan
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