MIT Working on A Micro Combustion Engine On A Chip

A group of scientists at MIT are working on a gas engine about the size of a quarter. Better yet, it's made out of sillicon. The device, who's individual pieces are all working, still needs to be fully assembled and tested. The engines components, like a combustion chamber, compressor, and turbine, are created out of sillicon wafers. To overcome the precision and high pressures needed in such a design, the engine is created out of 6 sillicon wafters which are sandwiched together to form an extremely strong frame. Each wafer has the outline of the different components cut out of it, so when assembed, 3D shapes form in the wafer-sandwich (think of using a book to create a hidden chamber, by cutting out the center of pages). The turbine spins at 20,000 revolutions/sec and produces 10 Watts of power. By comparison, a standard hobby servo might take about 2 Watts to run.

The scientists hope to have the whole engine finished by the end of this year.