“The Smallest-Ever Injectable Chip Hints at a New Cybernetic Medicine”
May 14th, 2021Via: Interesting Engineering:
Electronics are getting imperceptibly small, opening new avenues for medical technology to place advanced monitoring and treatment devices inside our bodies. And Columbia University engineers just demonstrated a new and revolutionary version of this, creating the world’s smallest single-chip system ever developed, according to a recent study published in the journal Science Advances.
And, critically, the tiny new chip can be implanted via a hypodermic needle to measure internal body temperature, and potentially much more.
The implant created by the engineers at Columbia is record-breakingly small, but it’s also breaking new ground in simply existing as a wholly functional, electronic circuit whose total volume is less than 0.1 cubic millimeter. In other words, it’s the size of a dust mite, not to mention far more compact than the world’s smallest computer, which is a cube-shaped device precisely 0.01-inches (0.3 mm) on each side. The smaller, new chip is only visible with a microscope, and pushed the envelope in power-sourcing and communications ingenuity design.
