Battery powered retina

Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories, led by principal investigator Susan Rempe, are part of a multi-institutional, multidisciplinary team developing a nano-size battery that one day could be implanted in the eye to power an artificial retina.

They are among the recipients of a five-year, $6.5 million grant recently awarded by the National Eye Institute of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish a new centre, the National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors. Based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under the direction of principal investigator Eric Jakobsson, the centre is designed to rapidly launch revolutionary ideas in the use of nanomedicine.

The centre will design, model, synthesise, and fabricate nanomedical devices based on natural and synthetic ion transporters, proteins that control ion motion across the membranes of every living cell.

The first task for the centre will be to design a class of devices for generating electric power - bio-batteries - for a wide array of implantable devices, starting with an artificial retina that has already been developed at the Doheny Eye Institute at the University of Southern California. The artificial retina and accompanying nanobattery will be used to correct certain types of macular degeneration.