Recent progress on transcutaneous energy transfer for total artificial heart systems

For many years, transcutaneous energy transfer (TET) systems have been developed for energizing total artificial heart systems. Although such a basic system can be developed without too much design effort, optimization toward high power transfer efficiency forces the introduction of novel system topologies and design strategies. In addition, for medical applications, the thermal impact of a TET system on the biological tissue should be taken into account, resulting in limitations on usable coil geometries. This article presents a TET system that has been developed for a power transfer of 25 W over a distance of 1 cm with minimal dimensions of 1 x 6 x 4 cm for the external driver and 5 x 3 x 1 cm for the internal electronics. The coil geometries have a thickness of 2 mm and a diameter of 6 cm. An overall system efficiency of 80% was achieved for an internal load of 25 W.