Abstract
AbstractThe Internet of Things (IoT) provides everyday objects and environments with “intelligence” and data connectivity to improve quality of life and the efficiency of a wide range of human activities. However, the ongoing exponential growth of the IoT device ecosystem—up to tens of billions of units to date—poses a challenge regarding how to power such devices. This Progress Report discusses how energy harvesting can address this challenge. It then discusses how indoor photovoltaics (IPV) constitutes an attractive energy harvesting solution, given its deployability, reliability, and power density. For IPV to provide an eco‐friendly route to powering IoT devices, it is crucial that its underlying materials and fabrication processes are low‐toxicity and not harmful to the environment over the product life cycle. A range of IPV technologies—both incumbent and emerging—developed to date is discussed, with an emphasis on their environmental sustainability. Finally, IPV based on emerging lead‐free perovskite‐inspired absorbers are examined, highlighting their status and prospects for low‐cost, durable, and efficient energy harvesting that is not harmful to the end user and environment. By examining emerging avenues for eco‐friendly IPV, timely insight is provided into promising directions toward IPV that can sustainably power the IoT revolution.
Highlights
The Internet of Things (IoT) provides everyday objects and environments with “intelligence” and data connectivity to improve quality of life and the efficiency of a wide range of human activities
Even assuming a 1% duty cycle for a sensor node operating on a standard 3000 mAh battery, and neglecting the energy required by the front-end electronics, the microcontroller, and the sensors, the full discharge of the battery would occur after 8–25 months, which reduces to about 4–12 months when a minimum of 60% of the battery voltage is required for the IoT node to operate
For the IoT to fulfill its promise to provide our daily objects and environments with “intelligence” and connectivity, it is essential to overcome the sustainability and technical challenges associated with the use of batteries as the sole power supplies of the IoT devices as the IoT ecosystem proceeds to one trillion nodes
Summary
The Internet of Things (IoT) provides everyday objects and environments with “intelligence” and data connectivity to improve quality of life and the efficiency of a wide range of human activities. Bringing together a discussion of the new materials developed for IPV with a focus on environmental sustainability will be important for guiding future materials selection efforts, as well as shaping future processing routes toward those with low toxicity and environmental impact This Progress Report begins by discussing the key requirements of energy harvesters for powering IoT nodes, before covering the energy sources available indoors and how they can be harvested. We discuss the new area of perovskite-inspired materials (PIMs) for IPV, and the requirements for designing efficient and environmentally friendly absorbers and manufacturing processes (Figure 1a) As such, this Progress Report brings together the fields of IoT electronics and energy harvesters with the field of emerging photovoltaic materials, especially perovskite-inspired absorbers. For the sake of brevity, we will continue to use the phrase “environmentally friendly” in Sections 4 and 5, while tacitly referring to the selected sustainability aspects just specified
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