Quarter Sized Turbine Engine for Your Cell Phone or Computer

October 10th, 2006

If someone told me that a turbine gas engine would end up inside a silicon chip a few years ago I would have told them their crazy.  Hell, if someone told me today, I’d say their crazy.  Well, some folks over at MIT - you know, the place where all those genius plans for technology are hatched - are a few steps away from accomplishing this.  The gas turbine engine, which would be about the size of a quarter, would reside inside a silicon chip and would apparently run 10 times longer then today’s batteries of the same weight.

“The miniature microengine would be made using six bonded silicon wafers in which the compressor, combustion chamber, spinning turbine, and other necessary features are pre-etched into the individual layers of silicon. Inside the tiny combustion chamber, the fuel and air would mix and burn. The turbine blades, made of microfabricated materials, would spin at about 20,000 revolutions per second.”

According to MIT Professor Alan Epstein of the department of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, the chips will be ready for testing within a year’s time, and ready for market place in 3 years or more.

New Battery Technology Promises more and less [EETimes]

Entry Filed under: Portable, Science