PROVO, Utah -- A team of engineers at Brigham Young University and a Provo-based company, Bipolar Technologies, have invented a tiny battery as thin as a strand of human hair that one day may be used to power sensors that monitor vital signs in trauma victims or pumps that regulate insulin flow in diabetics.
While small batteries, known as microbatteries, are not new in the engineering industry, this recent microbattery is unprecedented in its size and its hundred-fold increase in power over existing microbatteries.
BYU team leaders Linton Salmon, associate dean of engineering and technology, and John Harb, associate professor of chemical engineering, say they achieve these improvements through a new production process.
"Previously microbatteries have been assembled in a piece-by-piece fashion similar to the building of an automobile," Salmon says. "We build microbatteries using the same processes employed to build computer chips -- intricate patterning with extremely small dimensions and extremely pure materials -- and we hope to achieve the same kind of performance advances in the micropower field that have occurred in the computer industry."
Salmon, who received a doctorate in applied physics from Cornell University, will present the results of his team's research at one of the premier industry forums, the Solid-State and Actuator Workshop in Hilton Head, S.C., June 7-11.
Robert Huber, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Utah and a member of the workshop's program committee, says Salmon's paper was selected because it represents new and innovative work of high quality that could potentially impact the field.
"What Salmon's research does is allow producers to simplify the circuitry in heretofore complex systems," Huber says, thus enabling engineers to include microbatteries directly in the tiny devices they build.
Such machines are known as microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS. When Salmon was supervising MEMS research for the National Science Foundation in the early 90s, he noticed that fellow engineers were developing tiny, intricate systems that could be very useful except for one problem: "Many of them were powered by a D cell battery," Salmon recalls. "There's no point in building a MEMS product if there is no energy source correspondingly small enough to power it."
When Salmon returned to BYU, he and his colleagues set out to fill that empty niche.
The BYU team plans to commercialize the technology through Bipolar Technologies, an Orem company started by BYU graduate Rodney LaFollette.
"Initially we will target the markets that can use remote or autonomous sensors, such as the automotive and medical industries," LaFollette says.
"Vehicles have and are going to have an increasing number of sensors. Autos will have sensors to indicate tire wear, the temperature of and wear on the engine -- sensors to map the entire state of the vehicle."
Information gathered by sensors will be processed by an onboard computer. Knowing the condition of a vehicle will translate into real consumer savings, LaFollette says. "I am excited about all the application possibilities the microbatteries bring with them."
Salmon is equally enthusiastic. "I am personally convinced that microbatteries have tremendous potential for a large number of autonomous sensor applications, including those in the medical field," he says.
"If you need to implant a sensor into a person's body, you don't want connecting wires leaving the body. Microbatteries are the answer; they remove the need for connecting wires to power sources or to central control stations. Connections can be made without wires, similar to radio frequency signals used in cellular phones."
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Photos of Salmon and his microbattery can be emailed upon request.
Linton Salmon, BYU associate dean of engineering and technology
(801) 378-6317
[email protected]
Media Contact:
Michael Smart
(801) 378-7320
[email protected]
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