Imagine a future where you never to need to carry around a charger or buy new batteries. We could be headed down that road, beginning with a recent breakthrough: MIT researchers have created two millimeter-sized implantable fuel cells that use glucose within the cerebrospinal fluid around the brain to generate microwatts of power.
The fuels cells would have more immediate uses in the medical field—as opposed to commercial implementation—such as implants fighting brain disorders and blindness.
Specifically, electrons separated from the glucose create the electricity in an uninterrupted supply, since the overall process consumes glucose at 2.8-28 percent of the rate at which an organism regenerates glucose. Therefore, in theory, the fuel cells should cause no harm to a person, though it will be tested on animals first.
[via Gizmag]
