Nanotechnology to offer longer battery life in mobile devices?
1 min read
Mobile devices that run longer on lighter, slimmer batteries could soon be possible if research from the University of Illinois is anything to go by. Led by electrical and computer engineering Professor Eric Pop, a team of researchers developed a form of ultra low power digital memory which it claims is significantly faster and uses 100 times less energy than similar memory devices.
Photo caption: Three parallel memory bits with carbon nanotube electrodes. The middle bit is in the off' state, the other two are 'on'. The silicon dioxide substrate is shown in blue. Image courtesy Eric Pop.
"The technology could give future portable devices much longer battery life between charges," said Pop. "The flash memory currently used in mobile devices stores bits as charge, which requires high programming voltages and is relatively slow. We've been experimenting with higher power phase change materials (pcm) as an alternative and have lowered the power bit to 100 times less than existing pcm memory by focusing on one key factor; size."
Rather than the metal wires standard in industry, the group used carbon nanotubes that were 10,000 times smaller than a human hair. "The energy consumption is essentially scaled with the volume of the memory bit," said graduate student Feng Xiong. "By using nanoscale contacts, we were able to achieve much smaller power consumption."
To create a bit, the researchers placed a small amount of pcm in a nanoscale gap formed in the middle of a carbon nanotube. They were then able to switch the bit 'on' and 'off' by passing small currents through the nanotube.
According to Pop, the low power pcb bits could be used in existing devices with a significant increase in battery life. "Right now, a smart phone uses about 1W of energy and a laptop runs on more than 25W. Some of that energy goes to the display, but an increasing percentage is dedicated to memory."
But the professor maintains that the discovery could be used for more than reducing weight in mobile devices. "We're not just talking about lightening our pockets or purses," he said. "This is also important for anything that has to operate on a battery, such as satellites, telecommunications equipment in remote locations, or any number of scientific and military applications."
The team has made and tested several hundred bits so far and is now looking to scale up production to create arrays of memory bits that operate together. "Even though we've taken one technology and shown that it can be improved by a factor of 100, we have not yet reached what is physically possible. We have not even tested the limits yet. I think we could lower power by at least another factor of 10," concluded Pop.
