Staff additions announced last week will bring a critical mass to MTI's development process, said president William Acker. Jay Neutzler and Xiaoming Ren, celebrated inventors of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell technology, will join MTI in systems engineering capacities, Acker said. Ren comes to MTI from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which had licensed DMFC technology to MTI earlier this year.

Like an ordinary battery, the micro fuel cell is electrochemical in nature, except that it uses a continuous fuel source for the electrochemical reaction, Acker said. Unlike battery technology, the amount of energy available from a fuel cell is dependent not on the storage capacity of the energy source, but on the amount of fuel you can bring in, he said. By loading a liquid electrolyte from cylinders the size of a fountain pen cartridge, MTI believes it can power a fuel cell with 10 times the amount of "juice" or "talk time" as that produced by a conventional lithium-ion cell phone battery, Acker said.

The fuel cells ordinarily used for automotive engines, generators and PEMs use a relatively large "fuel processor," a catalytic hydrogen generator, Acker said. This technology is not amenable to form-factor reduction, he said. The PEM alternative developed at Los Alamos does not use a hydrogen generator, but works directly with methanol.

The cell takes liquid fuel directly through a gas diffusion mechanism, which produces an electrolytic charge in contact with a catalyst membrane. This membrane, a solid polymer electrolyte, is like "saran wrap with black paint," Acker joked. The mechanism not only produces electricity at room temperature, but also is relatively easy to package and manufacture in volume, he said.

Acker said MTI is in the early phases of product development and declined to name a time frame in which prototype cell phone batteries using PEM fuel cells would be available, but he identified all rechargeable battery slots as target markets for his products. These include "convergence devices," laptop computers, PDAs, cell phones and even children's toys.

Unlike lithium-based batteries, fuel cells do not need specialized controllers to keep them from overheating, Acker said. However, he said he envisions an ancillary market for semiconductors which monitor the "level of fuel" for a portable device battery.

In addition to its own micro fuel cell operation, MTI has set up a number of public companies devoted to developing and promoting a different aspect of energy management and transmission. Plug Power Inc., for example, is developing fuel cells for large scale power transmission systems. MTI also holds an interest in Satcon Technology Corp., an alternative energy company, and in Beacon Power Corp., which develops flywheel-based energy storage systems.

Founded in 1961 as an instrumentation company, MTI's revenues and profits are still quite small. Sales for the fiscal first quarter of 2001 were $1.6 million, with a loss of $1.0 million. The company's equity losses in new energy companies amounted to $4.9 million for the quarter. Plug Power lost $4.3 million and Satcon Technology lost $0.6 million in the quarter.