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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 26 2016, @06:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the okay,-maybe-a-really-really-little-battery dept.

As electronic devices become more compact and powerful, conventional methods for manufacturing electrical components simply won't do. The problem lies in the fact that current systems require a huge battery and their components are too bulky.

However, that all could change, as engineers from the University of Cambridge have created an ultra low power transistor that can run for a long time without a power source.

Basically, transistors are semiconductor devices that function like a faucet. Turn a transistor on and the electricity flows, turn it off and the flow stops. When a transistor is off however, some electric current could still flow through, just like a leaky faucet. This current, which is called a near-off-state, was exploited by the engineers to power the new transistors.

These new transistors are able to scavenge power from its surrounding environment allowing a battery to last longer. Dr Sungsik Lee, the paper's first author, also from the Department of Engineering says, "if we were to draw energy from a typical AA battery based on this design, it would last for a billion years." The new design could be produced in low temperatures and they are versatile enough to be printed on materials like glass, paper, and plastic.

Reference:
S. Lee and A. Nathan, 'Subthreshold Schottky-barrier thin film transistors with ultralow power and high intrinsic gain'. Science (2016). DOI: 10.1126/science.aah5035

At last, the Age of Facebook on the Milk Carton is nearly here.


[Ed note: Story title is taken from linked article by the University of Cambridge.]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @06:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @06:51PM (#419089)

    Generic calculators with tiny solar panels have been around quite a while. They must be functioning on pretty low power levels.

    What about using all the radio waves in the air to power something? I had a cheapo Radio-Shack crystal radio kit that produced audible sound (without headphones) using about an 80-foot wire antenna.

    (I had to merge 2 kit designs to pull of off: the "pure" crystal design and the battery radio: it was a multi-project kit. The pure crystal arrangement didn't work as well as the hybrid for some odd reason.)

    Make gizmos that use EM-drive power ;-)