Pacemakers

Your heart’s job is to keep your pulse steady to pump blood throughout your body. Sometimes your heart rate is slower when you’re relaxing, and sometimes it’s faster when you’re exercising or stressed. If your heart’s ability to keep the beat starts to go awry, cardiac electrophysiologists like me look for outside help from an implantable device. There are two common implantable devices for the heart: artificial pacemakers and defibrillators. Artificial pacemakers keep blood and oxygen flowing during times of…

In a bid to use solar energy more efficiently to power medical devices, scientists have innovated a new method to develop solar cells that could help build better pacemakers. Expanding the potential of solar cells, scientists from the University of Chicago incorporated holes on the top layer of the solar cells, making them porous. They found that the holes could improve the technology and in turn be used in making less-invasive pacemakers.The current method to make solar cells requires two layers. Here, either silicon is…

University of Chicago scientists invented an entirely new way to make a solar cell: by etching holes in the top layer to make it porous. Above, a microscope image of a silicon membrane after the etching process. Credit: Image courtesy of the Tian labInvented by <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>University of Chicago</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Founded in 1890, the University of Chicago (UChicago, U of C, or…