This is design by engineer from MIT and The Technical university of Munich. These are the design as new kind of glucose fuel cell which converts the glucose directly into electricity. This device is smaller then other glucose fuel cell device. It is just 400 Nanometer thick or about 1/100 diameter of human hair. These are published in Journal Advanced Materials newspaper in April. This device are able to generate 43 microwatts per centimeter of electricity.
The team who develop new fuel has believe that it could be also used as coating on medical implants, for example; artificial heart Or pacemaker. These implant should not be expensive and also have no cumbersome battery. Because while Replacing battery from implant is getting expensive and required invasive surgery.
Let’s see the history behind the development of this device;
The Scientists “Philipp Simons” Help the phd students from MIT and he is a co author of paper who can help to design the fuel cell’s. This team has said that inside all the bodies present glucose in everywhere and then these are decided to do something new and want to utilize this energy which is available in every body and this energy used for power implant device.
Structure of the cells;
These cells have three layers, an anode, cathode, an electrolyte.The anode has react to the surgar which is present in the body as Bodilyfluids. When reaction going on it released pair of protons and pair of electrons. And these ions can be taken by electrolytes on its external circuit where it used as the power of electric device.
However the teammates Continue work on this to give better. So after the studies they used ceramic to build electrolytes layer due to it long term stability, also for small scalability and silicon chip integration. The authors fir MIT said in press about this ceramic design. He also said that ceramic has ability to withstand temperature upto 600 degree celsius.
These ceramic design most useful for sterilization because it necessary that which ever is used for body for treatment and any surgery it must all the instrument should be Sterlizied. So there is no chance of infection. That’s why this ceramic design of implant is best for temperature because it have the capacity to hold in this temperature.
So that like our bodies, this fuel cell has use our natural sugars as a source of energy which is good for us.
Jennifer L.M Rupp, Simons these are supervisor and DMSE visiting professor and also an associated professor of solid state of electrolytes from chemistry at Technical University Munich in Germany has said that a in place of using battery, which can be taken upto 90 percent of implant volume, you should make the thin film device and also have a power source with no volumetric footprints.
These new fule cells come in 2016 by Rupp, who is specialized in ceramics and electrochemistry device, which is going to take a routine glucose test which is towards the end of her pregnancy.
However this team has not only who did this research, In 1960s on this time also did initial research on this device. They want to show the potential for converting glucose chemical energy into electrical energy. But at the time of 1960 for converting glucose fuel cell they used on the base of soft polymers.
But these are quickly eclipsed by lithium ion battery. It is the standard power source for medical implant, mostly focus on cardiac pacemaker. But the problem is that These fuel cell have capacity to convert directly into energy, it have no capacity to store the energy in device.
