Chip Maker ST Eyes Fuel Cell to Power Mobile Phone
Wed September 10, 2003 07:54 AM ET
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Franco-Italian chip maker STMicroelectronics said on Wednesday it had created technology for a tiny fuel cell to power mobile phones and increase the time between battery charges to 20 days.
The fuel cell could be commercial in a few years' time, depending on demand from cell phone manufacturers, ST said.
Fuel cells, which generate energy through an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, could replace current batteries, which are heavier and not as efficient.
ST says the new batteries would be as small as current mobile phone batteries, which, containing toxic metals, are also environmentally unfriendly when disposed of.
The fuel cell would be filled with an alcohol such ethanol and contain no toxic heavy metals, an ST spokesman said.
"This is a very promising technology. One cell will give a phone 20 days of standby time and there will be no toxic metals which are one of the major environmental concerns with today's batteries," he said.
ST made its announcement based on work by its own researchers and those at the University of Naples, Pirelli Labs and CNR institutes.
The company broke through in battery technology a decade ago when it started supplying its largest customer Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, with chips that made its handsets last for days on a single battery charge.
ST's new technology involves creating channels on flat pieces of silicon. These thousands of microchannels would maximize the contact area for hydrogen and oxygen to react and generate heat, water and electrical energy.
The company could not forecast how expensive the fuel cells would be, but said they would use standard semiconductor production technology which should keep prices low. |
