Kinetic and thermal energy harvesters for implantable medical devices and biomedical autonomous sensors

Implantable medical devices usually require a battery to operate and this can represent a severe restriction. In most cases, the implantable medical devices must be surgically replaced because of the dead batteries; therefore, the longevity of the whole implantable medical device is determined by the battery lifespan. For this reason, researchers have been studying energy harvesting techniques from the human body in order to obtain batteryless implantable medical devices. The human body is a rich source of energy and this energy can be harvested from body heat, breathing, arm motion, leg motion or the motion of other body parts produced during walking or any other activity. In particular, the main human-body energy sources are kinetic energy and thermal energy. This paper reviews the state-of-art in kinetic and thermoelectric energy harvesters for powering implantable medical devices. Kinetic energy harvesters are based on electromagnetic, electrostatic and piezoelectric conversion. The different energy harvesters are analyzed highlighting their sizes, energy or power they produce and their relative applications. As they must be implanted, energy harvesting devices must be limited in size, typically about 1 cm3. The available energy depends on human-body positions; therefore, some positions are more advantageous than others. For example, favorable positions for piezoelectric harvesters are hip, knee and ankle where forces are significant. The energy harvesters here reported produce a power between 6 nW and 7.2 mW; these values are comparable with the supply requirements of the most common implantable medical devices; this demonstrates that energy harvesting techniques is a valid solution to design batteryless implantable medical devices.