POWER SUPPLIES FOR WIRELESS INTEGRATED MICROSYSTEMS (WIMS): Design and Optimization

In this work, we developed a novel power supply for the WIMS-ERC (Wireless Integrated Microsystems - Engineering Research Center, Ann Arbor, MI) intraocular sensor (WIMS-IOS), an autonomous and implantable system. This device is representative of a broad class of microscale devices, whose full implementation in environmental and medical systems will require significantly smaller power supplies; presently, battery systems represent 85% mass and 50% volume of typical devices and they have intrinsically high power (3.5-4.2V) based on lithium chemistry which complicates integration with low- voltage MEMS, since it necessitates voltage regulation. Our underlying hypothesis was that selection of the optimum electrochemistry and usage of physical vapor deposition would reduce intrinsic losses because of the high resulting precision, while allowing integration with chips because of more benign processing conditions to MEMS. They also offer potentially lower cost than existing systems.

Dr. Fabio Albano is Chief Manufacturing Engineer and co-founder of Sakti3. He received the diplôme d'ingénieur from INP of Grenoble in 2002 and the M.S.E. and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2004 and 2008, with a focus on battery materials under the guidance of Professor Ann Marie Sastry.