天美传媒

April 29, 2025
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天美传媒 researchers make dissolvable battery using probiotics

New paper shows the potential of using probiotics 鈥 live microorganisms that offer health benefits when ingested but are otherwise harmless

Professor Seokheun 鈥淪ean鈥 Choi says the hardest part about making transient electronics is the battery. Professor Seokheun 鈥淪ean鈥 Choi says the hardest part about making transient electronics is the battery.
Professor Seokheun 鈥淪ean鈥 Choi says the hardest part about making transient electronics is the battery. Image Credit: Provided.

In the Mission: Impossible films, superspy Ethan Hunt 鈥 played by Tom Cruise 鈥 gets orders from his superiors on various devices that self-destruct in five seconds.

Could electronics disintegrate into nothing in real life? 天美传媒 Professor Seokheun 鈥淪ean鈥 Choi has researched disposable 鈥減apertronics鈥 over the past 20 years, but the hardest part about making so-called transient electronics is the battery.

鈥淭ransient electronics can be used for biomedical and environmental applications, but they must disintegrate in a biosafe manner,鈥 said Choi, a faculty member at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science鈥檚 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

鈥淵ou don鈥檛 want to have toxic residues inside your body. That type of device is called bioresorbable electronics. For transient or bioresorbable electronics, the key challenge is the power source 鈥 but most power sources, like lithium-ion batteries, include toxic material.鈥

Choi and his student research team took lessons from their previous research into biobatteries and applied that knowledge to a new idea: In , they show the potential of using probiotics 鈥 live microorganisms that offer health benefits when ingested but are otherwise harmless to the environment or humans.

Maedeh Mohammadifar, PhD 鈥20, a graduate of Choi鈥檚 Bioelectronics and Microsystems Lab, developed the original dissolvable microbial fuel cell during her time as a 天美传媒 student.

鈥淲e used well-known electricity-producing bacteria, which is within biosafety level 1, so it is safe 鈥 but we were not sure what would happen if these bacteria were released into nature,鈥 Choi said. 鈥淏ut whenever I made presentations at conferences, people would ask: 鈥楽o, you are using bacteria? Can we safely use that?鈥欌

Current PhD student Maryam Rezaie led the latest research using a premade blend of 15 probiotics.

鈥淚t鈥檚 well documented that probiotics are safe and biocompatible, but we were not sure if those probiotics have electricity-producing capability,鈥 Choi said. 鈥淭here was a question, so she did a lot of experiments on that.鈥

Early results proved unpromising, he added, but 鈥渨e didn鈥檛 give up. We engineered in an electrode surface that might be preferable to the bacteria, using polymer and some nanoparticles to hypothetically improve the electrocatalytic behavior of probiotics and give them a boost.鈥

The modified electrode was porous and rough, which offered excellent conditions for bacteria to attach and grow, and that improved the microorganisms鈥 electrogenic capability. Coating the dissolvable paper with a low pH-sensitive polymer 鈥 meaning that it will work only in an acidic environment like a polluted area or the human digestive system 鈥 increased the voltage output and the duration that the battery operated.

Although they produced only a small amount of power, Choi looks at the experiments as a proof of concept for him and future students to build on.

鈥淥ther research must be done,鈥 he said. 鈥淲e used probiotic blends, but I want to study individually which ones have the extra electric genes, and how synergistic interactions can improve the power generation. Also, in this research we developed in a single unit of a biobattery. I want to contact them in series or parallel to improve the power.鈥