Researchers at MIT and Texas Instruments have designed a new chip for portable electronics that could be up to 10 times more energy-efficient than present technology.  The power required could be so low that implantable medical devices such as pacemakers and health monitors could be powered indefinitely by a person’s body heat or motion.

The key to the improvement in energy efficiency was finding ways to make the circuits on the chip work at a voltage level much lower than usual – while most current chips operate at around 1.0 volt, the new design works at just 0.3 volts.

So far the new chip is a proof of concept. Commercial applications may include portable and implantable medical devices, portable communications devices, and networking devices could be based on such chips and thus have greatly increased operating times. There may also be a variety of military applications in the production of tiny, self-contained sensor networks that could be dispersed in a battlefield.In some applications, such as implantable medical devices, the goal is to make the power requirements so low that they could be powered by “ambient energy,” —using the body’s own heat or movement to provide all the needed power. In addition, the technology could be suitable for body area networks or wirelessly enabled body sensor networks.

The chip, mounted in a plastic package – Image courtesy/Joyce Kwong, MIT

From the MIT Energy Initiative via Slashdot.