A new solid state battery technology could enable engineers to create long-life, wireless sensor packages for applications ranging from aerospace and automotive to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

Known as the Stereax P180, the new product is believed to be the first solid state IoT battery designed for hostile industrial environments. It could be particularly important for applications where wired connectivity is difficult or impossible. “This is a product that allows engineers to come up with untethered designs,” noted Graeme Purdy, CEO if Ilika Technologies Ltd.  “They don’t have to worry about running cables.”

The new coin-sized, 180-µAh battery departs from predecessors in that it combines a silicon anode with a solid state electrolyte. Doing so gives it two advantages: It offers an industrial temperature range of -40°C to +150°C, and it features extremely low leakage. Those advantages make it a candidate for powering sensors in hot environments, as well as in locales where it may have to reside, unchanged, for many years.

Ilika executives foresee it being employed in common energy-scavenging applications, for strain gauges atop bridges and viaducts, where batteries can’t be easily changed out, as well as on process lines in high-temperature chemical plants and refineries.

“They have to be ‘fit and forget,’ which means that once you’ve installed them, you don’t want to be going back regularly to replace them, the way you would with a normal coin cell,” Purdy told Design News. “You want them to recharge and last for ten years, which is the length of time that most electronic components last.”

Ilika also believes the technology is well-suited to future automotive applications, particularly as the gradual move toward autonomous features causes automakers to rethink conventional sensor wiring schemes. Using the Stereax P180 with energy scavenging technology would eliminate the need to run hundreds of pounds of wiring back to a central battery, thus eliminating the cabling mass that plagues vehicles. Moreover, the distributed batteries would be able to handle the hostile environment of an engine bay or wheel well, he said.

Ilika has been demonstrating the technology in tiny sensor packages that contain the battery, sensor, Bluetooth module, battery management IC and a photovoltaic panel. “The photovoltaic panel harvests the light during the day, then powers the electronics and recharges the battery, so the unit can run 24/7,” Purdy said.

The company is also working with the Sharp Corp. on creating a “power brick” that would incorporate the solid state technology atop a silicon substrate, along with a tiny solar cell. The brick would be about one-tenth the size of the coin cell-sized P180, Purdy said. “You’re putting an extra layer of battery onto a millimeter-scale device that engineers could integrate into their SoC (system-on-chip) devices,” he explained. Such a configuration could be particularly important in the medical space for bioelectronics and wearable devices, he added.

The company is making the P180 technology available through a “fab-less” arrangement, in which OEMs take a license on it and do the production themselves.

To date, no similar technologies have been available, Purdy said, because solid state batteries have typically used lithium anodes that couldn’t operate at the higher temperatures of the Stereax P180.

“We’re enabling a market that is not currently addressable,” Purdy told us. “This is a technology that is compatible with an industrial standard that existing coin cells just can’t meet.”

Senior technical editor Chuck Murray has been writing about technology for 33 years. He joined Design News in 1987, and has covered electronics, automation, fluid power, and autos.

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