They did this by sealing a colony of cyanobacteria, known as blue-green algae, into a small metal container. Said container was then placed on a sunny windowsill and hooked up to an Arm Cortex-M0+ chip. The algae started photosynthesizing, which generated a tiny amount of electricity that kept the chip running for six months.
What's the latest natural process being used to power a computer chip?
Answer: Algae photosynthesis.
Talk about green electricity. A team of researchers at the University of Cambridge were able to prove that a computer chip could be powered by algae.
They did this by sealing a colony of cyanobacteria, known as blue-green algae, into a small metal container. Said container was then placed on a sunny windowsill and hooked up to an Arm Cortex-M0+ chip. The algae started photosynthesizing, which generated a tiny amount of electricity that kept the chip running for six months.
The process only generated about 0.3 microwatts per hour, which wouldn’t even remotely be enough to power a computer. The average desktop computer uses about 100 watts per hour, so you would need about 333 million of these power-generating algae units in order to run one. But it’s not hard to imagine a field of algae one day being used to generate electricity.
They did this by sealing a colony of cyanobacteria, known as blue-green algae, into a small metal container. Said container was then placed on a sunny windowsill and hooked up to an Arm Cortex-M0+ chip. The algae started photosynthesizing, which generated a tiny amount of electricity that kept the chip running for six months.
