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Get Power from Your Own Blood?

by Tim Stevens on July 23, 2007 at 02:17 PM

Nanogenerator Wants Your Blood

Doctors have been stuffing electrical devices like artificial hearts and hearing aids into the bodies of patients for decades now, but there's always been a challenge: Power. These internal gadgets either rely on batteries that need replacement via surgery or get their power from external sources, resulting in unsightly wires or contacts protruding from the body (internal hearing aids are sometimes in the skin behind the ear, while older pacemakers have wires coming out out of the stomach or under the arm).

Now, some scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology might have a solution: a tiny, tiny nanogenerator that can produce electricity just by being placed in your bodily fluids.

The devices generate power via ultrasonic waves, which are captured and turned into a small amount of current. The details of just how this works are somewhat scant at the moment, but we're guessing there aren't any turbines involved and that the amount of juice able to be extracted from your own juice won't enable you to give your car a jump start on a cold morning just by licking your fingers and touching the battery contacts. But, the hope here is that small devices patrolling your bloodstream or monitoring your vitals could provide their own power, potentially enabling them to work indefinitely -- well, until you dry out anyway.

From Engadget

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Tags: Power, Ultrasound

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