This column has learned to expect great technical leaps and presentations from Dr. Khalil Najafi (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan) and his students. For example, see our previous article on Dr. Najafi "U of M Professors named Distinguished Innovators for their singular work". The professor and his students will be presenting some of their latest and most important work at next month's TRANSDUCERS 2011 conference in Beijing, China. It's also known as "The16th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Micro Systems".
As we read through the schedule, we found that Dr. Najafi and students will be presenting two papers. The conference/exhibit itself runs June 5th to June 9th. More importantly, it looks like the professor and group will be presenting their work on their most significant development - a Micro Energy Harvester with the highest known energy output in its class. This micro device is significant in that it can harvest (or scavenge) ambient energy from its environment and produce a similar output that is 5x to 10x higher than any other known micro devices.
This new and exciting class of micro devices is expected to have a significant role in place of batteries and capacitors of similar size and performance. Applications will be broad - ranging from medical to military applications. A highly anticipated application will be that of embedded sensor networks to non-invasively monitor the health of structures. The ability of such systems to absorb and use the incipient energy of their home environments is critical. Self-monitoring of buildings, infrastructures and so on wouldn't be as accessible or even possible with the use of available battery and cable technology. Such a micro device and its technology would eliminate labor hours in monitoring and energy maintenance of these structure-systems.
Micro devices and the same technology might also have practical and useful application/s in the medical field. Many modern medical devices require some sort of power to operate and provide life-enhancing benefits. For example, an associate of ours recently had his pacemaker battery replaced - sort of a major but necessary inconvenience. The creation and implementation of micro energy harvesters in place of batteries might forestall these medical procedures for 9 - 10 years and perhaps longer. Micro energy harvesters of relatively large power-to-size ratio are becoming an important technology for this and many other reasons. Link here to the TRANSDUCERS 2011 site.
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