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Silver nanoparticles may be key to keeping hearts beating
More than 300,000 implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) are being implanted in patients every year, the majority of them powered by a battery system developed and improved by a research team led by UB faculty member Esther Takeuchi.
The batteries for ICDs, which shock the heart into a normal rhythm when it goes into fibrillation, in general now last five to seven years. But Takeuchi and her research team—husband and co-investigator, Kenneth Takeuchi, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Chemistry, and Amy Marschilok, UB research assistant professor of chemistry—are exploring even-better battery systems by fine-tuning bimetallic materials at the atomic level.
Esther Takeuchi, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Greatbatch Professor of Advanced Power Sources in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, developed the lithium/silver vanadium oxide battery that was a major factor in bringing ICDs into production in the late 1980s. For that work, she has earned more than 140 patents, believed to be more than any other woman in the United States, and last fall was one of four recipients awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
Takeuchi’s research investigating feasibility for ICD use is funded by the National Institutes of Health, while the investigation of new, bimetallic systems is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
So far, results show that materials can be made 15,000 times more conductive upon initial battery use due to in-situ (that is, in the original material) generation of metallic silver nanoparticles. The new approach to material design will allow development of higher-power, longer-life batteries than was previously possible.
These and other improvements are boosting interest in battery materials and the revolutionary devices that they may make possible.
“We may be heading toward a time when we can make batteries so tiny that they—and the devices they power—can simply be injected into the body,” Takeuchi says.
Right now, she and her team are exploring how to boost the stability of the new materials they are designing for ICDs. The materials will be tested over weeks and months in laboratory ovens that mimic body temperature of 37 degrees Celsius.
“What’s really exciting about this concept is that we are tuning the material at the atomic level,” says Takeuchi. “So the change in its conductivity and performance is inherent to the material. We didn’t add supplements to achieve that; we did it by changing the active material directly.”
She explains that new-and-improved batteries for biomedical applications could, in a practical way, revolutionize treatments for some of the most persistent diseases by making feasible devices that could be implanted in the brain to treat stroke and mental illness, in the spine to treat chronic pain or in the vagal nerve system to treat migraines, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, even obesity.
And even though batteries are an historic technology, they are far from mature, Takeuchi notes. This spring, she is teaching the energy storage course in the engineering school, and the class is filled to capacity. “I’ve never seen interest in batteries as high as it is now,” she says.
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