Energy Harvesting Can Enable 1 Trillion Battery-Free Sensors in the IoT
New tools to address the most urgent challenges of our 21st century world: from climate change, to ensuring clean energy, safe food, and foremost...
Dear Readers,
Thank you for your enthusiasm at the recent edition of The Harvesting Revolution.
In this month's edition, we are focusing on the challenges of energy harvesting solutions amidst the exponential growth of IoT devices in the market.
We have published a white paper on the total cost of ownership (TCO) of solutions powered by energy harvesting, along with a TCO calculator. These two powerful tools are designed to help you make informed decisions about powering your IoT devices.
As always, we have curated some of the best recent scientific articles on energy harvesting.
Best regards,
The Dracula Team
📚 Great reads
Scientific articles
After decades where human spaceflight missions have been reserved to low Earth orbit, recent years have seen mission proposals and even implemented plans, e.g. with the mission Artemis I, for returning to the lunar surface. SpaceX has published over various media (e.g., its official website, conference presentations, user manual) conceptual information for its reusable Starship to enable human exploration missions to the Martian surface by the end of the decade. The technological and human challenges associated with these plans are daunting. Read more…
Superconducting spintronic heat engine - Open Access
Heat engines are key devices that convert thermal energy into usable energy. Strong thermoelectricity, at the basis of electrical heat engines, is present in superconducting spin tunnel barriers at cryogenic temperatures where conventional semiconducting or metallic technologies cease to work. Here we realize a superconducting spintronic heat engine consisting of a ferromagnetic insulator/superconductor/insulator/ferromagnet tunnel junction (EuS/Al/AlOx/Co). Read more…
How liquids charge the superhydrophobic surfaces - Open Access
Liquid-solid contact electrification (CE) is essential to diverse applications. Exploiting its full implementation requires an in-depth understanding and fine-grained control of charge carriers (electrons and/or ions) during CE. Here, we decouple the electrons and ions during liquid-solid CE by designing binary superhydrophobic surfaces that eliminate liquid and ion residues on the surfaces and simultaneously enable us to regulate surface properties, namely work function, to control electron transfers. Read more…
Skin-inspired, sensory robots for electronic implants - Open Access
Drawing inspiration from cohesive integration of skeletal muscles and sensory skins in vertebrate animals, we present a design strategy of soft robots, primarily consisting of an electronic skin (e-skin) and an artificial muscle. These robots integrate multifunctional sensing and on-demand actuation into a biocompatible platform using an in-situ solution-based method. They feature biomimetic designs that enable adaptive motions and stress-free contact with tissues, supported by a battery-free wireless module for untethered operation. Read more…
Direct solar-to-hydrogen conversion from pure water using all-organic heterogeneous catalysts remains elusive. The challenges are twofold: (i) full-band low-frequent photons in the solar spectrum cannot be harnessed into a unified S1 excited state for water-splitting based on the common Kasha-allowed S0 → S1 excitation; (ii) the H+ → H2 evolution suffers the high overpotential on pristine organic surfaces. Here, we report an organic molecular crystal nanobelt through the self-assembly of spin-one open-shell perylene diimide diradical anions (:PDI2-) and their tautomeric spin-zero closed-shell quinoid isomers (PDI2-). Read more…
🌍 Climate related researches
Grasslands are crucial ecosystems that provide numerous ecological services and support biodiversity conservation. Grasslands undergo significant threats from both anthropogenic and natural sources, compromising their ability to maintain biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being. However, grasslands are frequently ignored in sustainable development objectives. Adequate knowledge of how grassland degradation affects ecosystem services is essential for sustainable management and grassland ecological restoration. Read more…
Understanding local patterns of rainfall variability is of great concern in East Africa, where agricultural productivity is dominantly rainfall dependent. However, East African rainfall climatology is influenced by numerous drivers operating at multiple scales, and local patterns of variability are not adequately understood. Here, we show evidence of substantial variability of local rainfall patterns between 1981 and 2021 at the national and county level in Kenya, East Africa. Read more…
Climate change is accelerating faster than ever - Open Access
The climate is changing faster than ever. Warming is now increasing at a rate of 0.26°C per decade, a record, according to a new scientific study published in Earth System Science Data, on Wednesday, June 5, by an international group of 59 renowned scientists from 44 institutions. The findings are tragically illustrated daily, in many countries, from extreme heatwaves in India, Pakistan, and Mexico to the heat dome in California and deadly floods in southern Brazil. Read more…
Global warming is costing lives, deepening health inequality and driving the spread of disease-carrying ticks and parasites across Europe, according to a major report.
The report reviewed hundreds of studies on the health effects of climate change — as well as the actions being taken in response — in Europe. Climate and health researcher Rachel Lowe and her colleagues tracked 42 indicators, including those on heat-related deaths, the spread of infectious diseases and trends in research on health and climate change. Read more…
💰 Energy Harvesting and IoT Market opportunities
Wireless IoT sensing devices can be placed on, in, or near people, equipment, infrastructure, and our environment. This gives us new tools to address the most urgent challenges of our 21st century world: from climate change, to ensuring clean energy, safe food, and foremost, caring for the health and well-being of an aging population. However, to achieve this, we need to address the ‘powering the IoT’ gap. That is, solutions need to run on batteries that outlive the IoT devices they power. Read More…
We published a white paper on total cost of ownership of solutions run on Energy Harvesting, along with a TCO calculator, two powerful tools to help you make informed decisions about powering your IoT devices.
Renewable Energy Procurement Market Set to Soar at 8–10% Growth Rate: Global Procurement Reaches 3,609 GW by 2022 | ELINT Market Research
The statistic indicates that the global energy harvesting trees market is expected to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.2% between the years 2021 and 2026. This projection suggests a substantial and consistent growth rate over the specified period, reflecting the increasing demand and adoption of energy harvesting trees as a sustainable and eco-friendly power generation solution. Read More…
The renewable energy procurement market shows promising growth, with renewables in the pipeline reaching 3,609 GW by 2022, an 8-10% increase from the previous year. This shift towards cleaner energy is driven by global environmental awareness, fostering innovation and investment. Rapid solar installations in India and China, along with significant wind energy investments in Europe and North America, highlight this trend, suggesting a substantial transformation towards sustainable energy globally. Read More…
Autonomous driving technology in the trucking industry is advancing rapidly in 2024, offering significant solutions to critical challenges such as high operational costs, driver shortages, and safety concerns. This webinar will explore how autonomous heavy-duty trucks are transforming logistics by reducing labor costs, enhancing safety through the elimination of human error, and improving operational efficiency. Read More…
💡 Learning Content
IoT Sensors powered by Energy Harvesting
Energy Harvesting – our main topics during the webinar include:
An introduction to Energy Harvesting. What type of ambient energies are available?
Challenges in converting and storing these energies into usable energy
Examples of real life use. Cases demonstrating that Energy Harvesting progressing from the laboratory to commercial applications, as well as some power electronics-related applications for Energy Harvesting.
Converting the ambient energy to usable energy. How can sporadic problems with energy and voltage levels be solved?
How much of the stored energy can be lost through leakage. Which tools/evaluation kits are available to develop self-powered electronics?
Discussing about low power converter IC’s, which can be powered from multiple harvesters at the same time, and manage the energy to power extreme low power microprocessors. These low power microprocessors have RF modules built in, can communicate wirelessly, and could be power completely autonomously.
Low power sensors
A LoRaWAN IoT Running Solely On Harvested Energy!
A LoRaWAN IoT running solely on harvested energy! e-peas shows its AEM10920 PMIC in action.
Yes, in ipXchange’s final interview with e-peas at Embedded World 2024, Bruno shows us a four-node, LoRaWAN-connected IoT spread across multiple halls of the show and running solely on ambient light energy – this was harvested through Dracula Technologies’ ground-breaking PV cells.
In parts one and two, we discussed evaluation boards and electronic shelf label reference designs, but this is quite the next-level demonstration of e-peas’ energy harvesting power management ICs. If you are sick of having to change batteries, head to the ipXchange website for the full interview, and apply to evaluate this technology today:
📅 Events to consider this month
Events to attend this month: list of exciting events, webinars, and videos for you to explore this month.
July, 03: IDTechEx Discusses the Key Emerging Applications for Conductive Inks
The conductive inks market is set to exceed US$6.5 billion by 2034, but remains a highly segmented market, across a diverse range of application areas for a number of conductive ink types. The current market landscape is dominated by silver flake-based inks, particularly in photovoltaics, but with emerging opportunities for both silver flake-based and other types of conductive inks, the evolution of the market over the coming decade is not straightforward. Register
July, 18: How EV Thermal Management Drives Fluid Demand
With a rapidly growing electric vehicle (EV) market, the demand for components and materials will rise too. EVs require a suite of fluids in order to operate optimally. The quantities and qualities of these fluids can change quite significantly between EVs and combustion engine vehicles. IDTechEx's new report "Thermal Management for Electric Vehicles 2025-2035: Materials, Markets, and Technologies" predicts that over 880 million liters of coolant fluids will be required for electric cars in 2035, combining water-glycol, oils, refrigerants, and immersion fluids. Register
The diverse and new technological possibilities of Industry 4.0 have been in the focus of industrial companies for many years now. But what are the real benefits of Industrial IoT for manufacturing? What are the best practices and solution approaches with regard to Network & Connectivity, interoperability & protocol conversion? What are the most effective ways of dealing with technical obstacles in the context of Data Management & Real-Time Data Analytics? How do IIoT innovations productively drive Asset Tracking & Condition Monitoring, Device Management or Predictive Maintenance? What new technologies from IIoT Cloud to Industrial Edge enable stable and reliable systems that provide a successful IT/OT integration as well as the efficient use of AI/ML, Robotics or Digital Twins, while at the same time advancing the level of Cybersecurity? Register
July, 24-26: IEEE AIoT 2024 - Melbourne, Australia
Bringing together interested parties (universities, research centers, industries, and stakeholders) from around the world working in the fields of AI and the Internet of Things to exchange opinions, discuss brand-new ideas, develop innovative and emerging solutions, and establish new collaborations. Register
We value your readership and encourage you to share your feedback or suggestions. Together, let us shape a sustainable future powered by innovation.
To contact us: contact@dracula-technologies.com
The Dracula Team.