Silicon Carbide Based Energy Harvesting Module for Hostile Environments

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the rst high temperature silicon carbide based energy harvesting module suitable for use in hostile environments. The system comprises a of SiC pin photovoltaic cell, HfO2 based capacitive storage bank and Schottky blocking diode. The system demonstrates the ability to harvest energy from a UV rich environment and store this energy on a HfO2 metal - insulator - metal (MIM) capacitor bank. The system unies work thathas focussed on developing high temperature energy harvesting technologies, a key technology in facilitating the deployment of resilient wireless sensor nodes into hostile environments. The system demonstrates the capability to store an initial voltage of 2.3V decaying to 0.5V in 300ms with a Schottky based system. Replacing the Schottky diode with a switched system, a much lower decay rate to 1.5V in over 8s was observed. This shows that an effective harvester could be made with a switched power controller.