Their study, published in Nature Materials, could be the foundation for future biomedical technologies to treat pain and disease.

“On the surface, it sounds like a crazy idea to place a lithium-ion battery electrode onto a living tissue, but the results we had are very promising,” said Zhe Cheng, first author of the study and a graduate student at UChicago.

“Lithium calms nerve activity, which makes it potentially very useful—we have many biomedical approaches to precisely stimulate nerves, but less to dampen them, which is what is needed for pain relief and other disorders.”