Funmurphys: the Blog

World's Smallest Gas Turbine Engine

MIT professors are trying to put a gas turbine engine on a chip. No, not because they are disciples of Schumacher, but because they are trying to build a better mousetrap, err, battery. The DOD is interested because they want to be able to provide soldiers plenty of power in the wilderness, or at least in difficult to supply situations.

Their microengine is made of six silicon wafers, piled up like pancakes and bonded together. Each wafer is a single crystal with its atoms perfectly aligned, so it is extremely strong. To achieve the necessary components, the wafers are individually prepared using an advanced etching process to eat away selected material. When the wafers are piled up, the surfaces and the spaces in between produce the needed features and functions.

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The MIT team has now used this process to make all the components needed for their engine, and each part works. Inside a tiny combustion chamber, fuel and air quickly mix and burn at the melting point of steel. Turbine blades, made of low-defect, high-strength microfabricated materials, spin at 20,000 revolutions per second -- 100 times faster than those in jet engines. A mini-generator produces 10 watts of power. A little compressor raises the pressure of air in preparation for combustion. And cooling (always a challenge in hot microdevices) appears manageable by sending the compression air around the outside of the combustor.

This is one reason I like engineers - when they have fun, we all benefit.