Implantable medical devices are widely used for monitoring and treatment of severe diseases. In particular, an implantable cardiac pacemaker is the most effective therapeutic device for treating bradyrhythmia, however its surgical replacement is inevitable every 5–12 years due to the limited life of the built-in battery. Although several approaches of energy harvesting have been explored in this decade for powering cardiac pacemakers, the modern, commercial, and full-function pacemaker has never been powered effectively yet. Here, we report an integrated strategy for directly powering a modern and full-function cardiac pacemaker, which can pace the porcine heart in vivo by harvesting the natural energy of a heartbeat, without using any external energy storage element. The generator includes an elastic skeleton and two piezoelectric composites, which could generate a high-output current of 15 μA in vivo over state-of-the-art performance. This study makes an impressive step toward fabricating a self-powered cardiac pacemaker and resolving the power issue of implantable medical devices by piezoelectric harvesting technology.

Over the past half‐century, cardiac pacing technology has adhered to one basic system. However, many pacemaker‐related complications are related to this system, particularly in terms of the power supply and leads. Here, for the first time a heart‐worn pacemaker strategy is presented, which allows batteryless powering and leadless pacing. The batteryless feature is attained via heart‐extrusion energy scavenging through a micromachined piezoelectric thick film transducer. A record in vivo output current of 30 µA is obtained in an adult swine by the implanted piezoelectric transducer, which can effectively drive a commercial cardiac pacemaker. The exocardial pacing method is demonstrated by this batteryless pacemaker functions without a device or leads placed within the cardiac chambers. Lead‐ or batteryless options are being explored as new basic features of cardiac pacemakers. The presented heart‐worn pacemaker strategy may be useful in future pacing technology.

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