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Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

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Scientists Create a Device That Generates Electricity From Heart Cells

For decades, engineers have been searching for better ways to power medical implants and wearable electronics. Devices such as pacemakers, cochlear implants, deep-brain stimulators and health-monitoring sensors all need a reliable source of electricity. Today, batteries are the most common solution, but they have a major limitation: they eventually run out of energy and can be difficult to make smaller without sacrificing their capacity.

Now, a team of engineers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed a radically different approach. Instead of relying on a conventional battery, researchers have created an ultrathin and flexible mesh that can harvest energy directly from living human heart cells.

The research, published in Science Advances, introduces a biohybrid system designed to work alongside living tissue and continuously convert the mechanical activity of cells into electrical energy.

The Problem With Batteries in Medical Implants

Modern medical electronics have become increasingly small and sophisticated. However, their power sources have not advanced at the same pace.

A battery provides energy from a centralized location. This works well for smartphones, watches and other conventional electronics, but it becomes more complicated when the device needs to operate inside the human body.

Batteries take up physical space, have a limited amount of stored energy and eventually need to be replaced or recharged. In an implanted medical device, replacing a battery can require another medical procedure.

Making batteries smaller can also create a trade-off. As the size decreases, the amount of energy they can store generally decreases as well.

Researchers therefore want to develop power sources that are smaller, more flexible and capable of operating continuously.

Jun Yao, associate professor in the Riccio College of Engineering at UMass Amherst and senior author of the study, describes this as an important challenge for the future of electronics that interact closely with the human body.

The Human Body Is Already Producing Energy

The researchers approached the problem from a biological perspective.

Instead of thinking about the human body as a machine powered by one central battery, they looked at how individual cells generate and use energy.

According to lead author Siqi Wang, a Ph.D. student at UMass Amherst, the human body can be viewed as a collection of tiny power-producing systems. Every cell requires and generates energy as part of its normal activity.

Some biological processes produce electrical signals. Nerve cells, for example, communicate using electrical impulses. Other processes generate mechanical energy.

The heart provides an especially interesting example.

Every heartbeat involves repeated contraction and relaxation of cardiac muscle cells. That constant movement represents a potentially useful source of mechanical energy.

The researchers wanted to capture some of that energy and transform it into electricity.

How the New Mesh Works

At the center of the new technology is a material called lead zirconate titanate, or PZT.

PZT is a piezoelectric material, meaning it can convert mechanical movement into electrical energy. When the material is mechanically deformed, electrical charges are generated.

The researchers arranged extremely thin PZT ribbons into an array. They then developed a method for integrating these ribbons onto an ultrathin and highly flexible polymer platform.

The resulting structure is designed to be much more flexible than conventional electronic components.

The next step was particularly important.

The researchers introduced human cardiac cells onto the platform. As the cells grew, they integrated with and around the PZT-containing mesh.

This created what the researchers call a biohybrid mesh harvester—a system in which living cells and electronic materials work together.

As the heart cells contract and move, their mechanical activity deforms the PZT elements. The PZT then converts that mechanical movement into electrical energy.

In simple terms, the system attempts to turn the natural movement of living heart cells into usable electricity.

A Distributed Power System

One of the most important ideas behind the research is not simply the use of heart cells, but a different way of thinking about how electronics should be powered.

Traditional electronics generally depend on a centralized power source. A battery stores energy in one place and distributes it to different components.

The researchers instead want to create a distributed energy system inspired by biology.

In the human body, energy-related processes happen throughout tissues and across individual cells rather than coming from one giant centralized source.

The new mesh follows a similar concept. Rather than placing a large battery next to an implant, tiny energy-harvesting components could potentially be distributed across living tissue.

This could eventually allow electronic systems to obtain energy from the biological activity occurring around them.

High Power Density

The early laboratory results are particularly interesting.

According to the researchers, their device achieved a power density about 10 times higher than systems based on a centralized power source.

Power density describes how much power can be generated relative to the amount of space occupied by the system. This is especially important for medical implants, where space can be extremely limited.

The researchers believe the technology could potentially become even more powerful.

Because the mesh is extremely thin, multiple layers could theoretically be stacked together. Increasing the number of layers could increase the amount of electrical energy generated while keeping the overall structure relatively compact.

This is an important advantage over simply making a conventional battery larger.

Designed to Work With Living Tissue

Another major goal of the project is improving compatibility with the human body.

Large, rigid or bulky electronic devices can create problems when placed inside biological tissue. The body's tissues are soft, flexible and constantly moving, while conventional electronics are often hard and rigid.

The new mesh takes a different approach.

Its ultrathin and flexible structure allows it to move more naturally with biological tissue. The integration of living cells with the electronic platform could also reduce the physical mismatch between electronics and the surrounding tissue.

The researchers believe that electronics operating at the cellular level could ultimately offer improved biocompatibility compared with systems that depend on bulky batteries.

Potential Applications

The technology could eventually have applications in a variety of implantable electronics.

For example, future versions could potentially help power pacemakers, biological sensors, neural interfaces, cochlear implants or other medical devices.

The concept could also be relevant to emerging technologies designed to continuously monitor biological activity.

However, it is important to separate the current laboratory achievement from future medical applications.

The researchers emphasize that the technology is still at the laboratory research stage. It has not yet become a replacement for batteries in commercially available medical implants.

Before such a system could be used in patients, researchers would need to address many challenges, including long-term stability, safety, electrical output, integration with different tissues and reliable operation inside the complex environment of the human body.

A Step Toward Battery-Free Bioelectronics

The new study represents a significant shift in how researchers think about powering electronics that interact with living organisms.

Instead of asking how to make smaller batteries, the researchers are exploring whether the body itself can provide some of the energy required by future devices.

The idea is surprisingly simple: living cells are constantly moving and producing energy, so why not harvest a small portion of it?

The ultrathin PZT mesh provides a way to convert the mechanical activity of heart cells into electricity while remaining flexible enough to interact closely with living tissue.

If the concept can eventually be developed into a safe and reliable medical technology, it could help reduce dependence on conventional batteries and enable a new generation of smaller, more flexible and potentially longer-lasting implantable electronics.

For now, the work remains an early laboratory demonstration. But it offers a compelling glimpse of a future in which some medical devices could draw their power not from a battery, but directly from the living tissue around them.

Reference: Siqi Wang et al., A Biohybrid Mesh Harvester for Distributed Energy Harvesting in Living Tissues, Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aei5963.

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