Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and secondary batteries expecting to annually rise 13% through
2010 to $16 billion.
The major driving force for the wide commercialization of
rechargeable batteries was the extended use of portable devices.
Especially, cell phones must be able to operate continuously in
standby mode. It involves significant low power consumption from a
small battery. Considering that primary batteries only return around
20% of the energy needed for their manufacturing, rechargeable
batteries are the lowest cost solution. Other driving forces for the
extended use of rechargeable batteries in portable devices are their
high sensitivity to minor power losses or fluctuations; the increased
demand for wireless game products; lower prices of cell phones,
PDAs, and cameras; and the progressive substitution of desktop
computers by laptops and netbooks. In the near future, there will
be many other application fields demanding very small power
sources. Thus, nanobatteries can be very useful as small, high-
power, active RFID (radio frequency identification) batteries. MEMS
(micro-electro-mechanical systems) batteries will be useful not
only in the medical and pharmaceutical industry as power suppliers
in implantable medical devices (several microns in size) but also
for automotive industry as parts for projectors, optical switching,
printers, and various sensors. These batteries could also be suitable
for Smartdust. Smartdust is a concept for wireless MEMS sensors
that can detect anything from light and temperature to vibrations.
Professor Christopher Pister from UC Berkeley suggested in 2001
creating a new type of micro sensor that could theoretically be as
small as a grain of sand. Research into this idea is under way and
DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is funding
the work. If these sensors are developed successfully, they will
require tiny, powerful batteries to operate and transmit their data.
The nanobatteries developed by the group of Peled [5, 6] might be
able to supply the necessary power while keeping the size of the
sensor as small as possible.
Several rechargeable electrochemical systems have
demonstrated to be useful accomplishing the needs of electronic
devices in last decades. Mainly, nickel-cadmium and nickel-metal
hydride have successfully contributed to the implementation
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