PR - Publications

Small rechargeable batteries are nowadays of crucial importance for our “portable” society. The use of rechargeable batteries will broaden towards, on the one hand, very large applications and, on the other hand, to very small applications. The present success of the so-called Hybrid cars is evidencing such large-scale application. On the other outer end of the “spectrum”, small-sized integrated batteries are expected to become more and more important in our daily life to “feed” future medical Implantables and the numerous wireless Autonomous devices, which will control our future offices and houses. This new electronic revolution is generally denoted as Ambient Intelligence and is generally considered as the next challenging development in the so-called Knowledge age.

Characteristic for Implantables and Autonomous devices is that these have to operate independently. This means that the energy supply must be guaranteed wirelessly. Evidently, rechargeable batteries will play a key role in all these future devices. As the energy consumption will be rather small, this opens up the possibility to integrate all-solid-state rechargeable batteries, enabling a high degree of IC integration.

The granted research proposal aims to fully integrate all-solid-state batteries into silicon, nowadays widely applied in the IC-industry. The integrated battery system will be based on the intercalation of lithium ions as energy carrying particle. It combines various recent developments, including the use of the extremely high Li-storage capacity of silicon. Furthermore, 3D-integration in silicon substrates has been proven to feasible from both a technological and economic point of view. Additionally, integrated batteries can also be applied for many other electronic applications, such as in future System-In-Package devices, becoming of crucial importance for the semiconductor industry.