Berkay Özbek, a graduate of the Electrical-Electronics Engineering undergraduate program of our university, a graduate student under the supervision of Prof. Haluk Külah and research assistant at the same department, will be supported within the scope of the TÜBİTAK 1512 Techno-Entrepreneurship Capital Support Program with his project, which aims to design a system for pacemakers that will generate its own energy and eliminate the need for batteries.
About the Project
Certain conditions can cause the heart’s internal electrical system to fail, resulting in an irregular heartbeat called arrhythmias. During arrhythmias, the heart may not be able to pump enough blood to the body, which can cause serious damages to vital organs. The most common treatment for arrhythmias is cardiac pacemakers, which stimulate the heart by generating appropriate current pulses. However, pacemakers need a battery system to generate these artificial stimuli. Pacemaker batteries usually have a lifespan of 8 to 12 years. At the end of this period, the patient is expected to undergo an additional operation and change the pacemaker battery.
The content of the project is to design a system that will meet the energy requirement of pacemakers by harvesting energy from low-frequency heartbeats. There are two distinct peaks in the energy spectrum of the heart (1-5 Hz, 22-28 Hz) from which energy could be extracted. The acceleration of the heart at these peaks will cause asymmetric charge distribution inside the crystal of the MEMS-based micro energy harvester. These electrical charges will be collected by the electrode structure positioned in the mode that will provide the highest power output and will be transferred to a supercapacitor after passing through the rectifier interface circuit and taking the appropriate form. In other words, each heartbeat of the patient will recharge the pacemaker of the patient. The designed structure will be positioned on a biocompatible, flexible, and non-cytotoxic substrate and implemented onto the epicardium layer between the right and left ventricles of the heart. In this way, the system will provide safe energy harvesting without affecting the normal heart operation and without damaging the surrounding tissues. Thus, patients who suffer from arrhythmias no longer have to undergo additional operations to replace the batteries of their pacemakers.
Özbek plans to start working on his project during his Ph.D. education, aiming to design a whole pacemaker system that can perform neural stimulation in the long term, extract ECG data of the heart and provide it wirelessly and generate its own energy.
About TÜBİTAK 1512 Techno-Entrepreneurship Capital Support Program
The 1512 Techno-Entrepreneurship Capital Support-Individual Young Enterprise (BIGG) Program supports entrepreneurial activities from the idea stage to the market in order to transform entrepreneurs’ technology and innovation-oriented business ideas into enterprises with high added value and qualified employment creation potential. Thus, it aims to encourage qualified entrepreneurship and establish startup companies with global competitive power that can develop innovative products and services with high technology.
