Using ultrasounds to communicate with chips

Just one week ago I posted a news on using ultrasounds through a hand held device to make this technique available for in field diagnostics.
Now, engineers at Stanford University have managed to find a way to power and communicate with medical chips embedded in the body using ultrasounds emitted by a pen like device touching the skin.
This would allow implanting smart chips deep into our body to release drugs, monitor a variety of parameters and relieve pain. 
Ultrasounds are routinely used in several medical exams and it is possibile to direct them quite precisely to a specific area of the body, thus focusing their "power". At the same time ultrasounds can be captured by chips as small as a a millimetre, thus ideal to be implanted using a needle.
The mechanisms found by the engineers at Stanford is able to convert the ultrasounds into an electrical current, sufficient to power a variety of chips that will be able to operate and transmit back the results of their analyses. The current is created through the piezo electric effect. A microscopic piezoelectric material is embedded in the chip and the ultrasounds create waves of compression and decompression that are converted into an electrical current.
The chip can transmit to the external of the body using a microscopic antenna.

About Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco fell in love with technology and its implications long time ago. His background is in math and computer science. Until April 2017 he led the EIT Digital Italian Node and then was head of the Industrial Doctoral School of EIT Digital up to September 2018. Previously, up to December 2011 he was the Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre in Venice, looking at the interplay of technology evolution, economics and society. At the turn of the century he led a World Bank-Infodev project to stimulate entrepreneurship in Latin America. He is a senior member of IEEE where he leads the New Initiative Committee and co-chairs the Digital Reality Initiative. He is a member of the IEEE in 2050 Ad Hoc Committee. He teaches a Master course on Technology Forecasting and Market impact at the University of Trento. He has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines and 14 books.