Fish scales have unique ability to scavenge surrounding energy, which could be used to power pacemakers
Raw fish scales could be recycled into an energy harvester for self-powered electronics, after Indian scientists produced a nanogenerator from the biowaste.
The device - produced by the researchers by processing fish scales to make them transparent and flexible then attaching electrodes - is capable of scavenging surrounding mechanical energies including body movements, sound vibrations and wind flow.
The possibility of using fish scales in this way comes thanks to their collagen fibres, which contain a "piezoelectric" property, whereby electric charge is created when a mechanical stress is applied.
Such a device could potentially be used for specialist applications such as biodegradable or edible electronics, self-powered implantable medical devices, or in vivo diagnostics, the researchers explained in a paper published last week in the scientific journal Applied Physics Letters.
"In the future, our goal is to implant a bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator into a heart for pacemaker devices, where it will continuously generate power from heartbeats for the device's operation," said co-author Dipankar Mandal, assistant professor at the Organic Nano-Piezoelectric Device Laboratory in Jadavpur University, in a statement. "Then it will degrade when no longer needed. Since heart tissue is also composed of collagen, our bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator is expected to be very compatible with the heart."
The research marks the first time scientists have attempted to organise the collagen nanofibrils within natural fish scales in a hierarchical way to give this unusual property, with the reserachers showing that the piezoelectricity of the fish scale collagen is relatively large.
"We expect our work to greatly impact the field of self-powered flexible electronics," said Mandal. "To date, despite several extraordinary efforts, no one else has been able to make a biodegradable energy harvester in a cost-effective, single-step process."
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