Design and Fabrication of a Cylindrical Intracardiac Electret Energy Harvester for Leadless Pacemakers

Abstract

This paper presents an electret-based energy harvester for leadless pacemakers by harvesting energy from the ventricular blood pressure using a PDMS/parylene electret on the surface of the cylindrical device. The proposed device has the advantage that the space within the inner cylindrical electrode can be used to accommodate the pacer electronics so that the harvester and the pacemaker can be integrated into a single device. The device design, fabrication and charging techniques of the tubular PDMS/parylene electret are presented. Preliminary tests of a prototype harvester showed 0.25 $\mu$W output to a matched 80 G$\Omega$ load for ± 63 mmHg pressure variation at 1 Hz.