Speakers

Seemingly every day, a new type of electronic device enters the market. Increasing numbers of these gadgets are powered by batteries, yet the selection of energy storage devices available to product designers remains limited. As a result, product designers and users alike are often forced to make compromises on how the end product is used. This session focuses on the attributes of, and challenges associated with, modern energy storage devices, with emphasis on small batteries used in portable devices and other space-constrained applications. An overview of key characteristics - including storage capacity, energy density, operating voltage, self-discharge, cycle life, cell resistance, charging parameters, and physical aspects - of commonly used battery chemistries and designs will be presented. Advantages and limitations of several types of energy storage devices will be reviewed, in the context of the demands placed on them by electronic systems incorporating low power sensors, microcontrollers, and radios. A brief treatment will be given to energy harvesting in these applications, along with a glimpse into energy storage devices currently in development and nearing commercial deployment.

Mr. Sather leads the product design and application engineering efforts at Cymbet Corporation, where he is responsible for ongoing customer engineering support and developing integrated power management and storage solutions for all applications. Jeff has more than two decades of experience in product design and development. His experience includes integrated circuit design; product development and characterization; semiconductor process integration; and testing high reliability memory and ASIC products at Honeywell and LSI Logic. Mr. Sather received his Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering, from the University of Minnesota.

Cymbet Corporation—a green technology company—is a leader in thin-film, solid-state storage devices and energy harvesting technology. The company is the first to market a component-class energy solution that designers can use to realize new embedded systems capabilities. Cymbet's EnerChip thin-film devices enable innovative energy storage applications for integrated circuits and new products for process control, medical, sensor, RFID, communications, consumer and portable electronic devices.