In-device materials for on-chip and flexible energy storage: technologies, designs and integrations

Dust-sized computers, sensors, and robots embedded on a chip or integrated into a thin, flexible system can sense light, sound, pressure, chemicals, and magnetic fields, as well as analyze and send data wirelessly; but they are plagued by a lack of sufficient on-board energy storage. The challenge of integrable energy storage devices is the focus of this session.

Scope:

Tiny microchips (known as smart dust) and ultrathin flexible electronics (known as electronic skins) with sensors, central processing units, and wireless communication modules simply do not take off because everything depends on the on-board energy storage to provide uninterrupted energy, which are not good enough.
The reasons are manifold. One obvious reason is that the construction of an energy storage device involves many challenges by itself, from materials to chemistries; but another reason is that microelectronic engineers are not chemists and vice versa, meaning that engineers do not know much about electrochemistry and chemists do not know much about fabrications tools and procedures of microelectronics and flexible electronics. This is why these two fields have remained largely separated. A result of this circumstance is that there are no energy storage devices that would allow for a monolithic integration into microchips or electronic skins.

The symposium aims at creating an interdisciplinary forum for scientists in the field of energy and electronic materials to inspire new materials, new design concepts, and new integration strategies that could launch energy storage devices into microchips and electronic skins and make a decisive difference.

The scopes include electronic material engineering and energy storage material development. Advances in electronic material engineering, such as novel designs of chips and technologies to add new materials to microfabrication procedures, offer tools for energy storage material scientists to integrate high-performance energy storage devices with advanced materials (solid-state electrolyte, safe and sustainable chemistries, high-energy-density electrode materials, etc). Moreover, materials from electronics and energy storage sometimes are complementary. Solid-state ionic materials can be used in energy storage devices or electronics. Smart designs would allow for a highly integrated device to improve the energy efficiency of electronics. Last but not least, energy storage devices in systems need advanced characterization tools for precise diagnosis and therefore to improve the energy storage ability.

Hot topics to be covered:

• Novel designs for on-chip and flexible energy storage
• Advanced on-chip techniques for fabricating microscale energy storage, including nano/microscale self-assembly, micro-origami, additive manufacturing, etc.
• Materials for sustainable and safe energy storage solutions
• Thin solid-state electrolytes
• High-energy-density and high-safety energy storage systems
• Unique energy storage mechanisms applicable at the microscale
• Solid-state ionic materials and devices to monitor battery operations, including ionic transistors, sensors, etc.
• Advanced techniques to in-situ and operando characterize materials, such as optical fibers, etc.