Carnegie Mellon University's Chris Bettinger and Jay Whitacre found that cuttlefish ink provides just the right chemistry and nanostructure to power tiny, ingested electronic devices.
Bettinger, an assistant professor of materials science and biomedical engineering, and Whitacre, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, have been pioneers when it comes to finding battery substances that could be digested, allowing for the powering of medical devices that might also be eaten. They reported some success creating edible power sources using materials found in a daily diet, but still needed to find the optimal pigment-based anodes to include in their edible sodium-ion batteries.
They ended up finding out that naturally occurring melaninsderived from cuttlefish ink exhibit higher charge storage capacity compared to other synthetic melanin derivatives when used as anode materials.
But not everything swallowed by a patient needs to be digestible. “You know, anybody who's ever taken a drug in their life probably hasn't adhered exactly to what the prescription says, or what the doctor says, so adherence is a very big issue in the industry,” Folk says. “Proteus Digital Health [Redwood City, CA] is a very interesting company. They've got a pill with a power supply, a sensor, and a transmitter. And when you swallow the pill, your stomach acid kicks off the battery and initiates a signal. That indicates that you've actually taken the drug.”
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