Power Circuits for Medical Devices

High-efficiency and space-efficient transcutaneous power transfer with multi-layer coils

TETS (Transcutaneous Energy Transfer System) has been successfully used for powering medical implants. However, their low power transfer efficiencies limit their scalability to high power levels. The power lost due to low efficiency heats the tissue, and can cause unacceptable increase in skin temperature leading to tissue death. The efficiency can be improved by increasing the coil diameters. Though, this is rarely practical due to space limitations.
This project aims to improve the efficiency of such systems without increasing the area of coils but instead using multi-layer coils, where each layer can be designed independently to maximize performance.
Our experiments show a 5x increase in the duration of safe power delivery (not increasing the skin temperature more than 2 C) using multi-layer coils as the secondary coil compared to using single-layer coils even when there is a 50% misalignment in between primary and secondary coils.

Power Circuits for efficient transcutaneous power transfer

In this project, we are developing new power circuit architectures and designing new power chips for TETS (Transcutaneous Energy Transfer System) to maximize efficiency for both wireless power supplies, and transcutaneous battery chargers.

Selected Related Publications

  1. Y.-C. Chu, N. Sertac Artan, D. Czarkowski, and H. J. Chao, “A New Single-Stage AC-DC Converter for Medical Implant Devices,” in IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2013), Beijing, China, May 2013. [ bib | pdf ]
  2. N. Sertac Artan, R. Patel, C. Ning, and H. J. Chao, “High-Efficiency Wireless Power Delivery for Medical Implants Using Hybrid Coils,” in 34th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC 2012), San Diego, CA, Aug-Sep 2012. [ bib | pdf ]
  3. N. Sertac Artan, X. Li, R. C. Patel, C. Ning, N. Ludvig, and H. J. Chao, “Multi-Layer Coils for Efficient Transcutaneous Power Transfer,” in 33rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC 2011), Boston, MA, Aug-Sep 2011. [ bib | pdf ]
  4. N. Sertac Artan, H. Vanjani, G. Vashist, Z. Fu, S. Bhakthavatsala, N. Ludvig, G. Medveczky, and H. J. Chao, “A High-Performance Transcutaneous Battery Charger for Medical Implants,” in 32nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC 2010), Buenos Aires, Argentina, Aug-Sep 2010. [ bib | pdf ]