Transistors operating at a voltage of 0.2 V
Engineers from the Belgian research center IMEC intend in 2011 to begin production of silicon chips with components operating at a voltage of 0.2-0.3 volts . This is far below the standard threshold voltage (Vt) at which conductivity occurs in transistors.
The threshold voltage depends on the composition of the semiconductor substrate, electrode, operating temperature. Vt in conventional transistors is about 0.7 V, and in modern CMOS - up to 0.5 V. The voltage below Vt is, in fact, considered leakage.
If the transistor learns to do some useful work at a voltage below the threshold, you can achieve significant energy savings in computer chips. But even more importantly, it is possible to drastically improve the energy efficiency of microcircuits and, theoretically, even implant electronics into the human body that works without external power sources. Actually, this is the goal of Dutch scientists working on the Human ++ project.
Now the specialists of the IMEC unit in Eindhoven are testing and simulating the behavior of silicon at a voltage below the threshold. When the work is completed, the microcircuits will be specially designed, taking into account the fact that individual elements must do something at such a voltage.
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With the help of new transistors, engineers want in the future to reduce the power of wireless transmitters and other electronic devices to such a level that they can work on energy collected directly from the human body (about 100 microwatts).
Already, the Dutch have managed to develop a radio transmitter ten times more energy-efficient than Bluetooth and Zigbee using the cardinal optimization of the design of 90-nanometer CMOS microcircuits. They also developed the BioDSP biomedical processor, which is also an order of magnitude more economical than the Texas Instruments MSP430.
But all this is not enough. Chips inside the human body are in sleep mode 99.8% of the time, so that the leakage of energy for them is very significant. Therefore, in the design of microcircuits for ECG sample 2011, IMEC engineers decided to switch to cells of 180 nm, as well as reduce the voltage Vdd below the threshold. All this will reduce energy consumption by several times.
The threshold voltage depends on the composition of the semiconductor substrate, electrode, operating temperature. Vt in conventional transistors is about 0.7 V, and in modern CMOS - up to 0.5 V. The voltage below Vt is, in fact, considered leakage.
If the transistor learns to do some useful work at a voltage below the threshold, you can achieve significant energy savings in computer chips. But even more importantly, it is possible to drastically improve the energy efficiency of microcircuits and, theoretically, even implant electronics into the human body that works without external power sources. Actually, this is the goal of Dutch scientists working on the Human ++ project.
Now the specialists of the IMEC unit in Eindhoven are testing and simulating the behavior of silicon at a voltage below the threshold. When the work is completed, the microcircuits will be specially designed, taking into account the fact that individual elements must do something at such a voltage.
')
With the help of new transistors, engineers want in the future to reduce the power of wireless transmitters and other electronic devices to such a level that they can work on energy collected directly from the human body (about 100 microwatts).
Already, the Dutch have managed to develop a radio transmitter ten times more energy-efficient than Bluetooth and Zigbee using the cardinal optimization of the design of 90-nanometer CMOS microcircuits. They also developed the BioDSP biomedical processor, which is also an order of magnitude more economical than the Texas Instruments MSP430.
But all this is not enough. Chips inside the human body are in sleep mode 99.8% of the time, so that the leakage of energy for them is very significant. Therefore, in the design of microcircuits for ECG sample 2011, IMEC engineers decided to switch to cells of 180 nm, as well as reduce the voltage Vdd below the threshold. All this will reduce energy consumption by several times.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/96422/
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