SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.]
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday October 26 2016, @08:09PM
That is one hell of a statement. That implies to me with near certainty that a device would still be functional and crunching code for tens of thousands of years. This would seem to be Diamond Age type technology that could explain why visitors to strange abandoned worlds still find working tech.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 27 2016, @12:18AM
Must not live in Florida, AA batteries here turn to a pile of blue-green salt within 10 years - and that's in the indoor controlled environments.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday October 27 2016, @01:41AM
Just gotta find a charged zed pee em... sorry, zee pee em. :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday October 27 2016, @02:22AM
Technically, a charged ZPM with this tech *might* power something till the heat death of the universe.
Whether or not that is possible, can you imagine for a second if we did make something that could think, record, and a limited fashion, interact with the rest of the universe?
Perhaps that's why that computer from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy said 42. It was a joke, and the followup is coming soon. It has a lot of time on its hands, and what better to screw with the large scale operations of a short lived bipedal inter-dimensional species?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.