Powering implantable medical devices with biological fuel cells

Abstract

With the quick progress in technology and microengineering, point-of-care and personalized care, supported wearable and implantable medicine are changing into a reality. Both microbial fuel cells and enzymatic fuel cells hold a very good potential to power such devices using biochemical fluids as fuel. For a long time, the path to implant safe and efficient medical devices has been around but it still has a long way to go, although there is a certain amount of progress in technologies and scientific fields.

One of the aspects of implantable medical devices that required attention is the power supply. The use of biofuel cells can become an alternative to supplying power to certain implantable medical devices instead of using batteries. Biofuel cells, their understanding, design, and compatibility are gaining importance as batteries are required to be charged and some batteries are even nonchargeable. The major associated with the implementation of biofuel cells is the integration of the implantable devices with the biofuel cells, adequate power supply, and biocompatibility. Figure 1 depicts numerous implantable medical devices.

This review paper summarizes the working principle of enzymatic/microbial fuel cells, their applications and provides an insight into the advances in their use in powering wearable and implantable devices. It highlights the various stages involved in the development of implantable fuel cells capable of generating power to run different implantable medical devices.