Distributed solid state battery boost for tiny drones
Researchers in the US and France have developed a chip to control a distributed solid state battery that can be integrated with a microactuator for drones, robots and medical devices.
The team at University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) and CEA-Leti developed a 2-in-1 chip with the battery storage and voltage boost conversion.
The chip was presented at the ISSCC 2025 conference in California this week. It provides up to 56.1V with the few Hz of operating frequency needed by microactuation systems.
The solid-state battery is divided up to provide high-voltage outputs without traditional bulky components like capacitors or inductors. This results in a highly compact and lightweight design ideal for micro flying robots and embedded medical devices. Leti spinout InjectPower is building miniature solid state batteries built in a fab for medical applications.
“The design uniquely integrates energy storage and voltage conversion, setting a new standard in efficiency and autonomy for small electromechanical actuators. In addition, by leveraging a novel battery matrix, this is the first demonstration of such a system for ultra-low-power, high-voltage applications,” said Gaël Pillonnet, scientific director of CEA-Leti’s Silicon Component Division, and a lead author of the ISSCC paper.
“Microdrones and microrobotic systems already require a battery, and so it costs us next to nothing to use a solid-state battery, split it up into smaller pieces, and dynamically rearrange the small pieces to generate the voltages we need. This is the smallest and lightest way we could think of to generate the high voltages needed to run these sorts of systems,” said Patrick Mercier, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, co-Director of the Center for Wearable Sensors, and Site Director of the Power Management Integration Center at UC San Diego.
Extrapolated data indicates that the system can scale down to weights as low as 14mg without sacrificing efficiency, making it a key technology for weight-constrained autonomous robots and small embedded devices for medical applications.
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