integrated BATteries (I-BAT)

Small rechargeable batteries are nowadays of crucial importance for our “portable” society. Examples of portable applications are mobile phones, laptop computers, telephones, digital cameras and wireless shavers. In addition, the use of rechargeable batteries will broaden towards, on the one hand, very large applications and, on the other hand, very small applications (Fig. 1). The present success of the so-called hybrid cars is evidencing such successful large-scale application. On the other outer end of the “spectrum”, small-sized integrated batteries are expected to become more and more important in our daily life to “feed” the numerous wireless Autonomous devices, which will control our future offices and houses. This new electronic revolution is generally denoted as Ambient Intelligence and is generally considered as the next challenging development in the so-called Knowledge age, which we just entered only a few decades ago.

              

Fig. 1. Diversification in the use of rechargeable batteries.

Characteristic for Autonomous devices is that these have to operate independently. This means that the energy supply must be guaranteed wirelessly. Evidently, rechargeable batteries will play a key role in these future devices. As the energy consumption will be rather small, this opens up the possibility to integrate all-solid-state rechargeable batteries, enabling a high degree of IC integration. An artist impression of a energy self-supporting IC is shown in Fig. 2, where a three-dimensionally (3D) integrated battery (bottom) is combined with a silicon solar cell (top).

Fig. 2. Example of a fully 3D integrated energy supply unit for autonomous devices.            

The project is a cooperation of Philips Research Laboratories, TU/e (department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry) and EURANDOM. Projectleader is Peter Notten (TU/e and Philips Research Laboratories).

 The contribution of EURANDOM will be in modelling and simulation using the knowledge built up in the previous Battery Modelling and Management project (BMM).


Last update: April 3, 2007
JJK