(196f) Design and Characteristics of Biodegradable and Implantable Batteries

Implantable Medical Devices fill many roles in our current healthcare for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. According to Halperin et al. over 25 million US citizens alone were reliant on implantable medical devices for life-critical functions in 20081. Biomedical devices can be divided into two groups: long lasting devices such as artificial joints, pacemakers, programmable drug delivery systems; and resorbable devices such as sutures, matrices for drug release, and stents. Electronic devices exist in the category of long-lasting devices, however recently there have been developments in designing resorbable temporary electronic devices. Three examples of such devices include non-antibiotic appliques, electrical stimulators, and drug release systems. As these devices develop to include sensitive and vital organs such as the brain and heart and reliance on implantable devices continue to grow, the challenges associated with current devices need to address now. Chronic implants evoke complex biological responses that impact devices performance2-3 and increase the risk of complications such as fibrosis and infection4. Furthermore, in the case of temporary devices, surgical removal of these devices as they become more complex, poses a significant challenge and add the risk of infection. As such there is a need for a class of electronic materials can both interface successfully with biological systems and be absorbed into the body. In this study, we developed a novel biocompatible, biodegradable, flexible and implantable battery devise. The anode and cathode were fabricated based on the aligned electrospun metal decorated carbon fibers derived from lignin biomass. Mg-C aligned carbon fiber was made as the anode electrode. Fe-C aligned carbon fibers were made as cathode electrolyte. The electrochemical properties of each electrode were studied in different fabrication conditions such as the size of the carbon fibers, carbonization temperature and amount of metal loaded. The electrolyte design was based on the biocompatible choline- based bio-ionic liquid (Bio-IL) conjugated flexible hydrogel with tunable conductivity. The engineered fibrous Bio-Ionic conjugated hydrogel provided suitable ionic conductivity and mechanical flexibility and biocompatibility to the battery construct.

[1] Halperin, D.; Kohno, T.; Heydt-Benjamin, T.S.; Fu, K.; Maisel, W.H. Security and privacy for implantable medical devices. IEEE Pervasive Comput. 2008, 7, 30–39.
[2] An, Y. and Friedman, R. (1998). Concise review of mechanisms of bacterial adhesion to biomaterial surfaces. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research, 43(3), pp.338-348.
[3] Koschwanez, H. and Reichert, W. (2007). In vitro, in vivo and post explantation testing of glucose-detecting biosensors: Current methods and recommendations. Biomaterials, 28(25), pp.3687-3703.