QUANTUM SENSORS

Researchers develop self-powered sensors using Quantum tunneling

They built a self-powered device that, with small initial energy input, that can run on its own for more than a year

Traditional power sources in sensors have limited battery life. Scientists have been working on developing smaller and more efficient sensors, and this is exactly what the team at Washington University in St. Louis has been doing. However, researchers have been challenged with their ability to do so, by a fundamental law of Physics.

What appears to be a challenging task can be solved by applying the principle of ‘quantum tunneling’ — unusual property of subatomic particles that moves electrons across barriers. The team of researchers at WU’s Preston M. Green Department of Systems & Electrical Engineering have developed a sensor that they say can function for an entire year with a single jumpstart of power.

The device developed is simple & inexpensive to build — four capacitors and two transistors, with a transducer, added to one of the two systems developed by putting two capacitors & one transistor together. The capacitors in both the dynamical systems hold a small initial charge of about 50 million electrons each. These two identical systems…