Biodegradable battery could power embedded health sensors

Embeddable sensors that can track a person’s vitals could eventually be a boon for healthcare, but something equally small, portable, and safe is going to have to power those sensors. Researchers from the University of Illinois may have an answer: batteries that slowly decompose in the body. Using magnesium and either iron, tungsten, or molybdenum, the researchers were able to build a small battery that delivered a constant output for at least 24 hours. 

A biodegradable, implantable battery could help in the development of biomedical devices that monitor tissue or deliver treatments before being reabsorbed by the body after use. “This is a really major advance,” says Jeffrey Borenstein, a biomedical engineer at Draper Laboratory, a non-profit research and development centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Until recently, there has not been a lot of progress in this area.” In 2012, materials scientist John Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign unveiled a range of biodegradable silicon chips¹that could monitor temperature or mechanical strain, radio the results to external devices, and even heat up tissue to prevent infection (see ‘Biodegradable electronics here today, gone tomorrow’).