Improving the power transfer efficiency and reducing the magnetic field leakage of pacemaker MCR-WPT system simultaneously via MNG-MNZ metamaterial

Research content

The study, led by associate professor Weihua Chen, combined the mu-negative metamaterial units and mu-near-zero metamaterial units to construct a hybrid metamaterial slab suitable for cardiac pacemaker MCR-WPT system. The MCR-WPT system containing the proposed metamaterial slab was proved to have a efficiency enhancing performance reaching 62.39% at 20 mm transmission distance, which is not inferior to single negative permeability metamaterial slab. The proposed metamaterial also showed superior magnetic leakage shielding performance in finite element simulations.

The research results and their significance

In clinical applications, implanted medical devices requiring electrical power including implanted cardiac pacemakers faces shortcomings like short battery lifespan and wires penetrating patient skin. Further problems including frequent surgery for battery changing and infections caused by the wire limits the clinical use of IMDs. MCR-WPT technology can help to avoid the problems above, but the wireless powering itself faces flaws including low transmission efficiency and serious magnetic field leakage.

The findings of this research show superiorities including easy manufacturing, low cost and requires no topology change of the WPT system ,providing a metamaterial-based efficiency improving method which also takes magnetic leakage shielding into account for radio-frequency IMD MCR-WPT systems.

Future outlook

Looking ahead, the LNTU research team plans to refine their design by more accurate experiments including animal in vivo powering test, introducing tunable capacitors to the metamaterial units to enhance the anti-misalignment ability of the metamaterial slab and applying the proposed metamaterial structure to MCR-WPT systems with higher order topologies.