Imagine a technology for powering your smart devices by recovering energy from lights in your office, the random movements of your body while reading these lines, or small temperature changes when you breathe or go out for a walk. This very technology will provide energy for wireless sensor networks monitoring the air in your city or the structural stability of buildings and large constructions remotely and sustainably, avoiding battery recharging or even replacing them. These are the challenges in micro energy harvesting from (local) ambient sources. Kinetic, thermal, and solar energies are ubiquitous in our surroundings under diverse forms, but their relatively low intensity and intermittent availability limit their potential recovery by microscale devices claiming for the urgent development of multi-source energy harvesters.
3DScavengers’ objective is the nanoscale design of multifunctional low-dimensional materials for simultaneous and enhanced individual scavenging applying photovoltaic, tribo-, piezo-, and pyro-electric effects. The demonstration of an environmentally friendly industrially scalable one-reactor plasma/vacuum method will be crucial to integrate hybrid-scavenging components and to provide tailored microstructure-enhanced performance. Such an approach will strongly affect academia and industry by reducing fabrication costs in equipment, time, and energy.
Energy harvesting will prompt self-powered wireless sensor networks to monitor buildings, human health and the environment and power portable electronic devices. Recovering just a fraction of the 20% of industrial energy input lost to vibration and heat would have a transformational environmental and economic impact. The development of multi-source systems with compatibility with already established renewable technologies (will open new paths for large-scale energy conversion that will contribute to achieving Europe's sustainability ambitions.
