A 200 μm by 100 μm Smart Dust system with an average current consumption of 1.3 nA

• Published in: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS) pp. 512 - 515
• Main Authors: Funke, Dominic A., Mayr, Pierre, Straczek, Lukas, McCaskill, John S., Oehm, Jurgen, Pohl, Nils
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.12.2016
• Subjects: Actuators; Capacitors; Clocks; Decision support systems; Generators; Large scale integration; Voltage measurement
• DOI: 10.1109/ICECS.2016.7841251

In this paper we present a microscale "Smart Dust" type system with a volume of 200 μm × 100 μm × 10 μm, called lablet. The lablet contains a 20 Hz low power clock generator, a sensor, electric actuators and a simple finite state machine to implement a predefined response to the sensor input. The system operates with supply voltages ranging from 0.3 V to 1.8 V and is thus suitable to be supplied from a capacitor with decreasing voltage. An input rectifier allows powering the lablet independent of polarity. The average current consumption of the system was measured to be 1.3 nA when supplied from a capacitor with an initial voltage of 1.8 V. The system is intended to be used within electrolyte solutions. The small system scale allows the investigation of "pourable electronics", a concept where large quantities of microsystems are deployed within a chemical solution to perform a predefined task. Several lablets have been designed and fabricated in a standard 180 nm CMOS process and the electrical functionality has been verified by contacting the lablet electrodes with multiple probe needles.