The Last Barrier To Ultra-Miniaturized Electronics Is Broken, Thanks To A New Type Of Inductor
One of the three basic circuit elements just got a lot smaller for the very first time, in what promises to be a trillion-dollar breakthrough.
In the race for ever-improving technology, there are two related technical capabilities that drive our world forward: speed and size. These are related, as the smaller a device is, the less distance the electrical signal driving your device has to travel. As we’ve been able to cut silicon thinner, print circuit elements smaller, and develop increasingly miniaturized transistors, gains in computing speed-and-power and decreases in device size have gone hand-in-hand. But at the same time these advances have comes in leaps and bounds, one fundamental circuit element — the inductor — has had its design remain exactly the same. Found in everything from televisions to laptops to smartphones to wireless chargers, radios, and transformers, it’s one of the most indispensable electronic components in existence.
Since their 1831 invention by Michael Faraday, their design has remained basically unchanged. Until last month, that is, when a UC Santa Barbara team led by Kaustav Banerjee demonstrated a fundamentally new type of inductor…
