Living Heart Mesh Powers Future Electronics

Engineers have successfully grown living human heart tissue around a mesh of micro-generators. This innovative system uses the natural motion of a beating heart to produce electrical energy. Each heartbeat bends the tiny generators embedded within the tissue, creating small electrical pulses.

The researchers strategically distributed these generators throughout the mesh rather than concentrating them. This design is calculated to provide more than 10 times the energy output for its size compared to earlier implanted energy harvesters. None of this technology has yet been tested within a living body.

This approach mimics how the body's own cells generate energy, distributing the power source throughout the tissue. The mesh itself is a grid of plastic ribbons, narrower than a human cell, interspersed with 64 tiny strips of lead zirconate titanate (PZT). When bent, PZT generates a voltage, and thin plastic layers seal these strips from the surrounding wet tissue.

Human stem cells were transformed into heart muscle cells and seeded onto the mesh. The cells formed a continuous sheet that enveloped the mesh, embedding it within the developing tissue. This living tissue began beating independently, and each beat produced a corresponding electrical pulse from the integrated generators.

Further development involved thickening the coating and the PZT layer, significantly increasing the voltage output. While the energy per beat remains minuscule, the breakthrough lies in integrating power generation at the cellular level. Future research will explore transplanting such tissue-grown meshes into bodies to assess their long-term viability and energy harvesting capabilities.