Overnight Success-23 Years Later

摘要

The EH300 and EPAD energy-harvesting modules accept energy from an assortment of widely available ambient energy sources that operate from vibration, light, chemical reaction, fluid and air flow, environmental heat, and others. The modules then store this energy to power conventional electrical circuits and systems such as wireless sensor networks or remote controls. The modules are completely self-powered, always in the active mode, and always ready to harvest energy from sources that generate intermittent energy impulses with varying source impedances. The technology behind this award-winning design came, as CEO Bob Chao says, incrementally since the inception of Advanced Linear Devices in 1985, when the company focused on building high-precision CMOS devices. Bob and several top designers made extremely precise op amps and voltage comparators and were successful at it, but their goal was to replace a very expensive laser-trimming system. They made a floating-gate technology on-chip to easily trim the circuits.