Is it possible to inject a 5G chip into the body?

A few months ago, a rumor took hold of the social networks : the vaccine against the Covid-19 would contain 5G microchips to track vaccinated people to retrieve private data. So is it possible or not?

Ironically, this rumor surfaced almost 56 years to the day after Gordon Moore, one of the founders ofIntel, stated an empirical law indicating a doubling of the number of transistors on an electronic chip approximately every 2 years. This law is still verified today with the elementary electronic components – the transistors – which today reach nanoscale sizes.

The first ones electronic components were made with vacuum ampoules containing filaments and grids called triodes. By heating and effect electrostatic, weak electrical signals could be amplified. This is what allowed the first wireless transmissions of signals in morse at the beginning of the XX^e century. Bulky, fragile, expensive and operating with high voltages, they will be replaced by so-called state-of-the-art technologies. solid with material crystals semiconductor.

The semiconductor component performing the amplification function was developed in the 1950s and the trade name was chosen by the Bell laboratories at the origin of this invention: the transistor. The first integrated circuit, that is to say, the possibility of making several transistors connected to each other directly in the semiconductor crystal was realized at the end of the 1960s.

On an industrial scale, the square circuits are made next to each other to facilitate their cutting before packaging. In 2021, IBM has just announced the completion of transistor with an active area of ​​2 nanometers (or about twentyatoms placed next to each other …): solid state found today in solid state disks of computers, the solid state disks (SSD).

Geometry problem

So how many transistors could we burn onto a piece of square integrated circuit that would go through the hole in the syringe used for the vaccine? The circuit is square, the needle is circular with an internal diameter of 0.6 mm: we start with electronics and here is a geometry problem that would give a hard time to a college student.

The side of the square which can enter a circle, in the worst case, 0.6 mm in diameter is 0.424 mm. This makes it possible to produce 1.8 billion transistors (for a surface transistor of 100 nm x 100 nm); as much as in fleas which equip the previous processors of a brand’s phones headed well known.

It is therefore possible to put in a syringe for injecting a vaccine an electronic chip waterproof with calculation capabilities similar to those of current cell phones. It is still necessary that it communicates with the outside and that it is supplied electrically.

It’s all hanging by a thread

This is not just a big problem, because the injected chip has to communicate wirelessly with the outside of the human body. Antennas must therefore be made on the chip for wireless communication.

This time it’s the Maxwell’s equations that will have to be used to size the antennas. James Clerk Maxwell is a physicist and Scottish mathematician of the XIX^e century. We owe him in particular the demonstration that electromagnetic fields used in the wireless transmissions of our smartphones propagate in space in the form of a wave at the speed of light.

According to the Maxwell’s equations, the ideal size of an antenna should be equal to the ratio between the speed of light and the frequency of electromagnetic waves (the wave length). Sub-multiples of this ideal size (½, ¼, 1/8 …) can also be used to limit the size to the detriment of detection. The current 5G uses frequency bands around 3.5 GHz. By choosing a sub-multiple of ¼ to limit the size of the antenna, an antenna of 2.1 cm must therefore be made to allow the electronic chip to communicate wirelessly with the outside of the human body.

With such a dimension, the entire surface of the chip is not sufficient to produce the antenna, even in the form of a coil. This is also something that we all know on the condition of practicing a sports activity and therefore going to a well-known sports brand: each item purchased has a chip. RFID. The only really visible part of the chip is the coil-shaped antenna.

Flea in the ear

The dogs and cats are precursors in matter, because the tattoo has been replaced by an implantation of a chip in subcutaneous. The device is about ten millimeters long to simply contain a unique number that can be read without contact. This number is read by bringing the reading system close to the animal’s ear.

And this is the case with all wireless data transmission technologies: the distance between the implanted chip and the reader is small, often limited to a few centimeters. First, it is about secure data precisely to avoid being able to remotely detect the data exchanged; second, because the power emitted by an antenna decreases with cubic distance. To increase the reading distance, it is necessary to increase the emitted power and therefore increase the volume drums.

How can we simply quantify so that we can answer our initial question? Between complicated units, complex mathematical equations and results very dependent on experimental conditions, the question seems simple and the scientific answer is not. To try, however, to give an answer on the sizing of a battery, we can look at that of mobile phones: the range of a phone is 1 km for a battery volume of about 10 cm.³. Assuming that half the volume of the chip injected with the vaccine is occupied by the battery, the range of the chip would be 0.1 cm. Given the size of the battery, the chip must therefore be in contact with the reading system in order to be able to exchange information.

So possible or not to put a chip in a vaccine?

The processor of a 5G chip can be injected through the hole of the needle used to inject the vaccine. The range will be low and will require a reading system in contact with the skin.

By account, the antenna for the exchange of information is impossible to achieve today.

The frequencies used in wireless telephony transmissions have increased tenfold in twenty years. By extrapolating this law, it will therefore be necessary to wait 60 years for the frequency of wireless transmissions to allow the creation of antennas small enough to be able to inject a chip into a vaccine. By then, we will all have been vaccinated against Covid-19.