With Energy Harvesting Circuits Spansion Aims for Greener Internet of Things

Embedded systems company Spansion launched a new family of power management integrated circuits (PMICs) for energy harvesting it says can enable a greener Internet of Things by eliminating the need for or extending the life of batteries in a multitude of IoT devices from individual wearable electronics to the nodes in wireless sensor networks. The technology will be used for battery-less product development or supporting battery charging.

This eco-friendly option for powering millions of sensors and IoT devices is an innovative approach that has the potential to reduce electrical infrastructure needs and reduce or eliminate the toxic disposal of batteries used in IoT devices. It also opens the door for future use cases that can be flexible in device placement and use, such as monitoring on wearables.

The Energy Harvesting family has PMIC chips and is complemented with a comprehensive online design support tool, which calculates the energy budget balance while providing a recommended bill of materials list that can be purchased online. The MB39C811 model can harvest from both solar and vibration energy, and the MB39C811 is an ultra-low-voltage boost PMIC for solar or thermal.

The Spansion Energy Harvesting family of devices works seamlessly with Spansion FM0+ microcontrollers (MCUs). These are ultra-low-power microcontrollers (based on the ARM Cortex-M0+ core) for industrial and cost-sensitive applications with low-power requirements.

"Spansion has a long-standing commitment to the environment and has been recognized globally and formally as a green partner by customers, governments and industry watchdogs for our policies, processes and results in reducing waste and resources," said Tom Sparkman, senior vice president of Spansion's Analog business unit. "Our customers can say goodbye to battery usage in their next-generation electronics.  Coupled with our low-power MCUs and the energy-budget calculator in the Spansion Easy DesignSim support tool, the Spansion Energy Harvesting PMICs offer a differentiated solution that can help our customers offer more eco-friendly devices across a broad spectrum of applications."

Sunnyvale, California-based Spansion has a broad and differentiated Flash memory portfolio and provides embedded systems solutions to automotive, consumer and gaming, communications and industrial segments. The company uses a global ecosystem of energy harvesting and storage device partners.