There was a time, not so long ago, when computers were so large, they occupied entire rooms. Today, some processing units can come as small as a few specks of dust.
With little room for storage, the tiniest computers must rely on ultrasound or photovoltaic cells to continuously top up microbatteries with energy from vibrations or sunlight. That has its downsides, as the computer won't work without a constant power supply or in dark places like the human body.
"There is a desperate need to develop high-performance batteries for the millimeter and sub-millimeter size regime because such energy storage systems would facilitate the development of genuinely autonomous microsystems," the authorsFull-sized computer batteries are usually based on 'wet chemistry', which means metal foils that conduct electricity are placed in contact with liquid electrolytes to create a flow of energy.
At the scale of a cubic millimeter, it's extremely difficult to roll thin and brittle materials into this sort of shape via external pressure. The technique kind of works like a rolling window blind. As the thin material is tugged down, you can let that mechanical tension go and the whole thing will shoot up and roll into a cylinder.On a chip, researchers were able to achieve this movement by pinning down one side of the thin material to create, in essence, the bar of a window blind.
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