Terminator-style cyborgs on manner as boffins combine electronics with human cells

Eggheads say their revolutionary “biohybrid mesh harvester” could replace batteries for wearable and implantable electronics like something out of the Arnie movies

Terminator-style cyborgs are a major step closer after scientists successfully integrated electronics with human cells. They say their revolutionary “biohybrid mesh harvester” could replace batteries for wearable and implantable electronics.

Engineers in the United States designed the ultrathin, flexible mesh that seamlessly integrates electronics with human cells to provide a continuous, reliable, powerful electrical supply.

They say their findings, published in the journal Science Advances, provide a potential solution for getting rid of batteries in wearable and implantable electronics. Senior author Professor Jun Yao, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst said: “Humans have long dreamed of a future where certain electronics can augment our abilities.”

Aside from science fiction, real-life examples include pacemakers and implantable defibrillators, deep brain stimulators, cochlear implants and various health monitors.

But every one of those needs a power source. Batteries, the dominant power source, are bulky and eventually run out of juice, while making them smaller and more flexible reduces the charge they can store.

But study lead author Siqi Wang, a Ph.D. student, said: “Our bodies are 24/7 power plants.

“Every single cell produces its own power.”

Prof Yao, who has previously demonstrated a mesh that can grow with and monitor heart tissue, built an artificial neuron that can communicate directly with human cells and discovered how to harvest clean energy from thin air.

He explained that everything battery powered relies on a centralised supply of energy, but that’s not how the body works. Instead, each cell in a human body is its own “power plant” – and the power is distributed throughout the entire system.

Prof Yao said: “We wanted to shift this traditional, centralised paradigm to something more distributed and modelled on biology.”

The research team began with an array of thin ribbons of lead zirconate titanate (PZT), which converts mechanical energy into electrical energy.

They then devised a technique for putting them on an ultrathin, ultraflexible polymer platform.

Next, the team seeded the new platform with human cardiac cells which, as they grew, meshed seamlessly into and around the PZT-loaded platform.

The result was a device that moves and looks like human tissue, but works like a battery that never needs to be replaced.

Prof Yao, who pointed out that their research so far exists only in the lab, says that the device generated 10-times more power density – or the amount of energy that can be produced in a given volume – than those systems that rely on a centralised power source.

And he says that’s just the start as the films are ultrathin, so they can be stacked in layers – drastically increasing the amount of power on tap while remaining non-invasive.

Prof Yao added: “The beauty of this system is how non-invasive and powerful it is.

“Our bodies want to reject systems that come with bulk batteries, but when the device exists at the cellular level, you get vastly improved biocompatibility.”