Cyborg Insects: Now Nuclear Powered
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 14 of December , 2009 at 12:40 am
Even if you’ve got a micro air vehicle that provides its own power for thrust, like a Rhinoceros beetle with an implanted optical lobe stimulation controller, you still need power for the communication system itself. One ideal solution is to try and harvest electricity from the insect, but a more realistic approach (at the moment) might be a dependable long-life battery, and nothing is more dependable and long-life and potentially dangerous than a nuclear battery.
Don’t worry, it’s not at all dangerous. The nuclear battery in question is powered by nickel-63, a “mildly radioactive” isotope with a half-life of about 12 years, meaning that the battery could easily provide power for a decade or two or even as long as a century. Funded by DARPA and developed at Cornell, the battery generates enough power to emit a high-power RF communication pulse once every 3 minutes or so. Here’s how it works:
The RFID transmitter converts the energy of radioactive decay into mechanical movement in a MEMS device. A tiny silicon and piezoelectric cantilever, 40 micrometers thick and 4 to 8 millimeters long, is suspended on a chip over the radioactive thin film like a diving board over a pool. Electrons ejected from the radioisotope accumulate on the cantilever, giving it a negative charge. Now the cantilever is attracted to the (relatively) positive Ni-63 thin film and begins to bend toward it. As soon as it bends enough to touch the Ni-63, the charges jump back onto the thin film, and the cantilever, freed of the accreted electrons, springs back to its starting position. The power is generated when the cantilever snaps back to its original position. It continues this way until the isotope’s radioactivity is depleted.
The entire system, which is just a prototype and has not been optimized for either size or power output, is just 1 square centimeter in size. Besides nuclear powered remote control cyborg insects, researchers suggest that the batteries could be used in a variety of long-term sensing and monitoring applications.
VIA [ IEEE ]
Comments (1)
Category: Cybernetics
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Comment by Barrett Ames
Made Monday, 14 of December , 2009 at 8:56 am
WOOT WOOT CORNELL!!
