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Maybe Charles Babbage was onto something...Computers have become so integrated into our lives that it's sometimes easy to forget how much energy is required to keep them going. Silicon chips use a lot of power and Nanowerk has a great article today on the consequences of that energy use:...about 200 billion kWh of electricity a year used by computers.... That means that generating the electricity for using 1 billion computers will release some 128 million tonnes of CO2 (280 billion pounds) into the air.
Maybe we can find the way forward by looking backwards. Dr. Robert Blick at the University of Wisconsin is developing nanomechanical computational devices -- chips that sacrifice a degree of speed but in return are vastly superior to silicon in terms of energy consumption and robustness. Soft Machines adds to the discussion and distinguishes Dr. Blick's work from Eric Drexler's rod logic.
Under-20 is one thing; under a micron is something else. I've never been too interested in FIFA, but I'll be cheering for the Simon Fraser University team competing in the nanogram division of the 2007 RoboCup. Even the Vancouver Sun is following the game!PhD Students Daniel Sameoto, See-Ho Tsang and Ian Foulds have developed a soccer team so small you need a scanning electron microscope to follow the action. Soccer might not be the first thing you think of when you hear "nanotechnology", but success on the playing field could be the first step to more significant applications in medicine, electronics and a wide range of other fields.Go Canada!
Pacemakers, cochlear implants, neurostimulators, drug delivery systems -- implanted medical devices are crucial to the lives of tens of thousands of people. All of those systems need electricity which means bulky batteries containing toxic chemicals and dangerous, expensive surgery to extract and replace them. But perhaps not for much longer.
Sweet Power, a BC medical technology company based on Vancouver Island is developing an implantable fuel cell capable of generating electricity using blood sugar. Sweet Power's glucose fuel cell is a great example of MEMS (microelectronic systems) and how as devices get smaller, their power and usefulness keep increasing.
Sweet Power was recently recognized for their achievements at the 2007 Nanotech Ventures Awards in the Health and Medical Category. The significance of what Sweet Power is doing goes beyond their own technical achievements. By developing a way to make implantable devices cleaner, safer and smaller, Sweet Power is enabling the next generation of technology to save lives.
