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A Batteryless Energy Harvesting Storage System for Implantable Medical Devices Demonstrated In Situ

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Abstract

We report a wireless energy harvesting and telemetry storage system in 180 nm CMOS technology, demonstrated in situ in rat carcass. The implantable device has dimensions 13 mm × 15 mm and stores 87.5 mJ, providing a self-powering time of 8.5 s transmitting through tissue. We utilize an all-solid-state flexible supercapacitor of breakdown voltage 0.8 V and capacitance 400 mF to harvest incoming wireless power, followed by a boost converter CMOS that drives an active wireless transmitter at 1.5 V at 2.4 GHz in the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band. The DC/DC converter component and switching frequency selection were guided by genetic algorithm analysis and use digital feedback to control the pulse width modulation (PWM), which slowly modifies the duty cycle to control output voltage fluctuations. This implantable medical device system presents the roadmap for batteryless energy harvesting in vivo and in clinical environments, exhibiting the highest operating storage density of 450 μJ/mm2 reported to date.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Henry Zhang for his assistance in device assembly and packaging. The authors would like to acknowledge Emily Cook for helpful discussions on multivibrator circuits. This work was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) MTO under the auspices of Dr. Jack Judy through Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, Pacific Grant/Contract No. N66001-11-1-4029.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Implantable Devices and School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Oren Z. Gall & Hansraj Bhamra

  2. Center for Implantable Devices and Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Chuizhou Meng, Henry Mei & Pedro P. Irazoqui

  3. The Jackson Laboratory, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Bar Harbor, ME, 04609, USA

    Simon W. M. John

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  1. Oren Z. Gall
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Correspondence to Oren Z. Gall.

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Gall, O.Z., Meng, C., Bhamra, H. et al. A Batteryless Energy Harvesting Storage System for Implantable Medical Devices Demonstrated In Situ. Circuits Syst Signal Process 38, 1360–1373 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-018-0915-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-018-0915-4

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