A Brigham together with Women's Hospital (BWH) led squad has developed a unproblematic "coat of armor" to encase pocket-size batteries, rendering them harmless if they are e'er swallowed. Children, peculiarly infants together with immature toddlers, tin move ingest these batteries, leading to serious impairment to their esophagus every bit good every bit other gut tissue, together with sometimes, death. Such incidents are on the rise, withal upwards until now, no solutions convey been directed at the battery itself. The novel work, published online Nov 3, 2014 inwards theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers a simple, cost-effective create that if implemented, could dramatically cut if non eliminate, this unfortunate problem.
"To date, in that place has been no excogitation to address this number amongst pocket-size batteries," says Jeff Karp, PhD, BWH Division of Biomedical Engineering inwards the Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Stem Cell Institute. "To address this challenge nosotros sought to prepare something that would homecoming the battery inert, specifically when it was exterior of a device."
Each year, roughly five billion "button" batteries are produced across the world. These small, disc-shaped batteries ability everything from children's toys, hearing aids together with Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation pointers to remote controls together with musical greeting cards. While recent legislation requires battery compartments inwards children's toys to move secured amongst screws, many items ordinarily used past times adults incorporate these batteries inwards easily accessible formats together with their packaging provides no protection. With the proliferation of such gadgets, together with the need for ever-powerful batteries to ability them, the occupation of accidental ingestion is increasing. In 2013, in that place were to a greater extent than than 3,000 reported cases of accidental battery ingestion -- the bulk inwards children nether historic catamenia 6.
"Ingested disc batteries remove emergent removal from the esophagus," says co-first study writer Giovanni Traverso, MB, BCh, PhD, a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital together with a researcher at MIT. "The swallowing of these batteries is a gastrointestinal emergency given that tissue impairment starts every bit before long every bit the battery is inwards contact amongst the tissue, generating an electrical electric flow together with leading to a chemic burn."
Karp together with his colleagues became aware of this number inwards 2010, together with decided to apply their collective expertise toward developing a novel solution. "This seemed similar a tractable occupation that nosotros could brand meaning headway on inwards a curt catamenia of time, merely based on our expertise inwards materials together with devices," says Karp.
Karp, together amongst get-go writer Bryan Laulicht, PhD, a postdoctoral beau inwards Karp's lab, noticed that when a battery sits inside a device, in that place is gentle trace per unit of measurement area applied to it, withal when it is exterior the device, such strength does non exist.
"We ready out to create a specialized coating that could switch from an insulator to a conductor when subjected to pressure," said Co-author Robert Langer, Institute Professor from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences together with Technology.
The scientists discovered this unique gist inwards an unlikely house -- touching on screens. Using an off-the-shelf cloth known every bit a quantum tunneling composite, they identified a nanoparticle-based coating that, when subjected to pressure, allows an electrical electrical flow to transcend through. In contrast, it allows no electrical flow to run inwards the absence of such pressure.
They used this cloth to coat i side of the batteries -- roofing the "minus" ends or the anodes. To determine the coating's effectiveness, they teamed upwards amongst Traverso, exposing coated together with uncoated batteries to gut tissue both inwards a laboratory dish together with inwards living animals. In all cases, the coated batteries caused no impairment spell the uncoated batteries, every bit expected, caused meaning damage.
In improver to reducing injuries, this excogitation is too probable to move quite cost-effective. "The ultimate toll volition depend on the exact composition of the cloth that is used, but for our electrical flow formulation, we're talking cents, non dollars," says Laulicht, get-go writer of the paper.
Now, Karp together with his colleagues are working to determine the best road toward manufacturing together with scaling upwards to a sufficiently large number of batteries, together with thus working amongst battery manufacturers to instruct the coated batteries into the hands of consumers.