Chinese scientists Dr. Zheng Jiang and Bo Shi Jing from Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems has jointly developed an implantable self-driven nanogenerator that can power a cardiac pacemaker with electricity generated by a patient’s breathing in future. The self-powered system harvests energy from breathing movements and stores the energy in the form of electricity to drive the pacemaker.The nanogenerator system includes an implantable nanogenerator and an energy conversion and storage device. The scientists implanted prototype of nanogenerator in rats and successfully collected and converted into energy more breathing generated by moving parts of rats in the form of stored energy and the ability to drive an external device.
The scientists observed that energy produced by rats breathing can successfully drive pacemakers. If used in the human body with a pacemaker the nanogenerator will work properly. The nanogenerator is 12 millimeters long, 12 millimeters wide and 0.7 millimeter thick. Pacemakers have long been limited by their lack of a long-term supply of electricity, as current implanted devices are mainly powered by batteries. This invention will break the bottleneck and greatly extend the service life of medical devices in the field.
