Science Alert November 22, 2020
Continuous, battery-free operation of sensor nodes requires ultra-low-power sensing and data-logging techniques. According to the researchers at Washington University by directly coupling a sensor/transducer signal into globally asymptotically stable monotonic dynamical systems based on Fowler-Nordheim quantum tunneling, it is possible to achieve self-powered sensing at an energy budget that is currently unachievable using conventional energy harvesting methods. They have developed a device that uses a differential architecture to compensate for environmental variations and the device can retain sensed information for durations ranging from hours to days. With a theoretical operating energy budget less than 10 attojoules, they demonstrated that when integrated with a miniature piezoelectric transducer the proposed sensor-data-logger can measure cumulative “action” due to ambient mechanical acceleration without any additional external power…read more. Open Access TECNICAL ARTICLE
Operating principle and architecture of the proposed sensor-data logger. Credit: Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 5446 (2020)