Fully Biodegradable and Long-Term Operational Primary Zinc Batteries as Power Sources for Electronic Medicine

Abstract

Given the advantages of high energy density and easy deployment, biodegradable primary battery systems remain as a promising power source to achieve bioresorbable electronic medicine, eliminating secondary surgeries for device retrieval. However, currently available biobatteries are constrained by operational lifetime, biocompatibility, and biodegradability, limiting potential therapeutic outcomes as temporary implants. Herein, we propose a fully biodegradable primary zinc−molybdenum (Zn−Mo) battery with a prolonged functional lifetime of up to 19 days and desirable energy capacity and output voltage compared with reported primary Zn biobatteries. The Zn−Mo battery system is shown to have excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability and can significantly promote Schwann cell proliferation and the axonal growth of dorsal root ganglia. The biodegradable battery module with 4 Zn−Mo cells in series using gelatin electrolyte accomplishes electrochemical generation of signaling molecules (nitric oxide, NO) that can modulate the behavior of the cellular network, with efficacy comparable with that of conventional power sources. This work sheds light on materials strategies and fabrication schemes to develop highperformance biodegradable primary batteries to achieve a fully bioresorbable electronic platform for innovative medical treatments that could be beneficial for health care.

Aqueous Batteries for Human Body Electronic Devices

“…More importantly, this Zn//Mo battery is capable of supplying energy for electrochemical NO production, demonstrating the potential for the treatment of NO-related diseases (Figure e,f). Meanwhile, the Zn//Mo battery can be completely degraded after 12 weeks of rat implantation, further illustrating the excellent degradability (Figure g) …”

“…(g) Three-dimension-rendered computed tomography images of SD rats over 12 weeks after the implantation of the Zn//Mo battery. Reused from ref . Copyright 2023 American Chemical Society.…”

“…Meanwhile, the Zn//Mo battery can be completely degraded after 12 weeks of rat implantation, further illustrating the excellent degradability (Figure 7g). 82 Liquid Electrolytes. The electrolyte is an important part of the battery component, which undertakes the storage and transport of charge carriers.…”

Advances in Bioresorbable Materials and Electronics

“…The key components are anodes, cathodes, electrolytes, separators, and packaging structures. 222,223 Table 2 provides an overview of the performance characteristics of bioresorbable batteries. The first reported bioresorbable battery design 224 uses Mg foil as the anode, with Fe, W, or Mo foils as the cathode, and PBS as the electrolyte as the basis for a primary cell.…”

Special Devices for Zinc-Ion Battery: Structure, Mechanism, and Application

“…Near-neutral aqueous zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs) have recently received great attention due to their intrinsic safety, low cost, environmental friendliness, nontoxicity, and high abundancy of metallic zinc. − Therefore, ZIBs, as the complement to lithium-ion batteries, are considered to be an excellent candidates for large-scale energy storage. Most importantly, because of the easy preparation and strong adaptability of ZIBs, many special configuration devices have been developed (Figure ), such as photorechargeable ZIBs, − self-charging ZIBs, − stretchable ZIBs, , biocompatible ZIBs, ,− decoupling ZIBs, − micro-ZIBs, − etc. These devices greatly expand the application scenarios of ZIBs, such as small autonomous sensing devices, health monitoring devices, wearable energy storage devices, etc.…”