Swallowable Battery To Power Ingestible Devices, Carnegie Mellon University Study

At the National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia this week, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have reported on a battery they developed that can be swallowed and later degraded safely by the GI system. The battery consists of safe and well known materials including pectin, melanin, and already widely used PLGA copolymer. Although the battery is expected to be excreted, if it does get stuck inside the body it will break up into small pieces and exit the body safely anyways.