BATTERY-FREE CHIP POWERED BY ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES

Ant-sized Microchip Could Power Potentially Connect Trillions of Devices

As the size of electronic devices and chips continues to decrease and their level of interconnectivity continues to increase, we are presented with new challenges: namely, how do we power these technologies at a low-cost. Several recent ideas have proposed using wifi waves to charge wireless devices as well as batteryless gadgets that run on body heat. Amin Arbabian, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University demonstrated his low-energy consuming chip at the VLSI Technology and Circuits Symposium in Hawaii.

Prof. Arbabian believes his ant-sized battery-free chip will cost just a few cents to make. His device harvests energy from the electromagnetic waves that transmit signals to its receiving antenna. The microchip requires very little energy to power it, which means it could be used in the trillions of devices that will come to be connected to the Internet, the so called “Internet of Things.”