It is today obvious that the world energy consumption overweighs the quantity that our planet can safely and reversibly deliver. The reduction of our consumption is a global challenge, which has to be dealt with by all industry sectors. In the sector of electronics and integrated circuits, the green electronics trend features 2 aspects.
Servers in large datacenters (ex: Google) account for a significant part of the global electricity consumption and do contribute to CO2 emissions. All electrical apparatus are known to consume power even when shut off while remaining plugged. One of the green electronics targets is thus to limit the power consumption of any electronic system, while preserving its speed performances. The key is to improve energy efficiency and design smart power management schemes, especially during stand-by and low-activity periods. It is also important to limit the C02 emissions from the production of integrated circuits and lengthen their life cycle, while using non-toxic products.
The development of nanometer CMOS technologies allows designers to cram more functionalities onto single chips within a few mm³. When deployed in large number, those chips are building blocks for ambient intelligence systems, which can be used for managing our energy consumption in a smarter way (heating or cooling of buildings, electricity production and delivery, transportation). Moreover, ambient intelligence can also be used for improving healthcare (e.g. patient monitoring) and human security. The target is here to design autonomous integrated circuits, which operate without a battery, by harvesting the energy from the environment (light, vibrations, heat, flow). Those circuits thus need to be designed for ultra-low power consumption (< 10 µW per chip).
With a team of more than 70 professors, researchers and students, the microelectronics laboratory of UCL (DICE) is active in green electronics by carrying research projects, and proposing Ph.D. and master theses. All levels of abstraction are covered from technology up to system, with numerous publications of papers in international journals and conferences, setting up of spin-off companies and patent applications.
Contact: david.bol@uclouvain.be