Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

This project proposes a new paradigm to allow pervasive deployment of wireless sensors that monitor objects and people in our surroundings for the Internet of Things (IoT). Instead of using wires or batteries to power traditional electronic sensors, we replace the electronics with thermotronics, i.e. components that can sense and process information without electricity, using heat instead. The infrared emission from people, machines, and thermal events (failure, fire) is captured by an array of thermal transistors, switching their state and launching a sequence of logic operations to directly process the IR information, without electric circuitry or other external power. This concept allows infinite lifetime and continuous monitoring of presence and events, which is not possible today without costly battery replacement or wired installations. What makes this new paradigm possible is the recent invention of radiative thermal components, such as the thermal transistor and thermal diode, proposed by our collaborators. They are based on the drastic non-linear change in emissivity of phase change materials (VO2) as a function of temperature. Here, the heat is provided by the captured IR for the sensing function, and from transferred from one transistor to the next for signal processing. The project includes modeling of the near field radiation and design of the thermotronic elements and circuits, development of the VO2 films and surface micromachined MEMS fabrication process to create low heat capacity and thermally insulated components, and experimentally characterize their behavior. This project will not only allow the first demonstration of this type of transistor, but also develop its implementation using MEMS technology to create thermotronic logic gates and circuits for zero-power, truly wireless, low-cost monitoring.