Keysight’s Test Solutions Selected by Bioenzymatic Fuel Cells to Understand the Behavior and Characteristics of Biofuel Cells

Leverages Keysight’s benchtop instruments to kick-start industrial development of biofuel cells

SANTA ROSA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: KEYS), a leading technology company that delivers advanced design and validation solutions to help accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, announced that Bioenzymatic Fuel Cells (BeFC), and innovator of bio enzymatic fuel cells, has selected and integrated multiple Keysight solutions to better understand the behavior and characteristics of biofuel cells.

BeFC is a French start-up company that offers innovative paper biofuel cells for sustainable and eco-friendly energy generation, as well as digital electronic platforms optimized for their thin and flexible fuel cells. BeFC’s technology uses biological catalysts instead of chemical or expensive noble metal catalysts to convert natural substrates such as glucose and oxygen into electricity. Their biofuel cell technology allows the eco-friendly replacement of batteries for existing applications. It creates new opportunities for low-power, ultra-thin health monitoring devices, logistics / transportation monitoring and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

BeFC needed to kick-start the industrial development of their biofuel cells with advanced benchtop instruments that:

• accelerated the prototyping phase of their flexible printed circuit boards;
• delivered low-power measurements with a high time-base resolution; and
• performed electrochemical measurements to further engineer their paper biofuel cells.

Keysight worked with BeFC to integrate multiple hardware and software solutions that provided BeFC with valuable insights to better understand the biofuel cells’ behavior and characteristics. The Keysight M9614A PXIe 5-channel precision source / measure unit combined with the Keysight M9005A PXIe chassis offered BeFC twenty-five independent measurement channels to use for electrochemical testing. These platforms met the test needs of BeFC by enabling higher channel density and fast throughput in a compact and affordable package.

Lisa Guildbaud, BeFC R&D engineer stated, “The Keysight PXIe multichannel platform has provided us with an affordable and efficient system for electrochemical measurements with the ability to rapidly screen novel raw materials while improving the half cells of the biofuel cells.”

“Keysight has enabled BeFC to quadruple their test throughput by using a PXIe solution with high channel density, powered by PathWave Test Automation,” stated Chris Cain, vice president of Keysight's Electronic and Industrial Products. “These capabilities enable their R&D team to conduct a variety of experiments in parallel and accelerate their time to market.”

Additional Information

A BeFC case study is available at https://www.keysight.com/us/en/assets/7121-1089/case-studies/Power-the-Future-with-Biofuel-Cells.pdf.

About Keysight Technologies

Keysight delivers advanced design and validation solutions that help accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world. Keysight’s dedication to speed and precision extends to software-driven insights and analytics that bring tomorrow’s technology products to market faster across the development lifecycle, in design simulation, prototype validation, automated software testing, manufacturing analysis, and network performance optimization and visibility in enterprise, service provider and cloud environments. Our customers span the worldwide communications and industrial ecosystems, aerospace and defense, automotive, energy, semiconductor and general electronics markets. Keysight generated revenues of $4.2B in fiscal year 2020. For more information about Keysight Technologies (NYSE: KEYS), visit us at www.keysight.com

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