Placing supercapacitors in a chip

Supercapacitors are usually bulky devices that can store significant amount of energy, like a capacitor but with higher capacity… somewhere between 10 to 100 times more than a capacitor (but less than a chemical battery).
This capacity would turn out handy for powering chips (that require much less power than an electric car…) but the bulkiness of supercapacitors makes this impossible. Till now.
Researchers at VTT, Finland, one of the EIT Digital Core Partners, have developed a technology that can create micro-supercapacitors, so tiny that can actually fit onto a chip.
The crucial component is a nano-electrode, just a few nano-metre thick. It is made of porous silicon covered with titanium nitride. This solution provides a high (the highest so far) surface to volume conductivity, that makes possible to obtain hight power throughput even within the tiny dimension of a chip.
Tests show a one square cm of this supercapacitor can deliver 55 microwatts of power for one hour. Additionally, the design is such that on the same surface it is possible to place the electronic circuit for the sensor and microchip.
This result can find important application in the wearable domain where powering of chip is still one of the major hurdle to overcome.

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.