NANOMATERIALS ENABLING SMART ENERGY HARVESTING FOR NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET-OF-THINGS

Project Information

NANO-EH

Grant agreement ID: 951761

DOI

10.3030/951761

Project closed

EC signature date 19 June 2020

Start date 1 October 2020

End date 31 July 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Future and Emerging Technologies (FET)

Total cost

€ 3 929 360,00

EU contribution

€ 3 929 360,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK - NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, CORK
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - NANO-EH (NANOMATERIALS ENABLING SMART ENERGY HARVESTING FOR NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET-OF-THINGS)

Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Communication among devices has served the aim of enabling cooperative behaviors as reactions to external stimuli or events, from evaluation of alerts to concerned actions following changes of enviromental conditions. The 4IR builds on the IoT paradigm, as it relies upon the scenario of having billions of interconnected autonomous mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity and access to knowledge. While enabling such massive deployment, the 4IR should be increasingly eco-friendly. The 4IR is a disrupting approach that will force companies in almost every domain to re-organize themselves in a more efficient way, by exploiting technological breakthroughs such us artificial intelligence , wireless communication and quantum computing. The integration of these emerging technologies into every day life requires efficient power supply solutions in computing, sensing, memory enlargement and human-machine interaction. Connected devices may be simple sensing nodes in a network or may be sensing and actuating elements of complex nets, and are further deployed in most diverse fields, from medical diagnostics to security, from predictive maintenance to environmental safety (ambient and infrastructure monitoring) and from industrial automation to intelligent transportation systems till many kinds of daylife activity. One perceived bottleneck for 4IR is that in most situations, IoT devices/networks will be remotely deployed, so that maintenance may be either incovenient or impossible. Consequently, a foundational aspect for the successful deployment of 4IR is that IoT nodes operates maintenance-free over their whole predicted lifetime. In particular, this implies that IoT devices either have to embed energy sources consistent with their operative lifespan or that clean and renewable energy convertors, if working off-grid, must sit on board. The energy convertors allow scavenging energy from different sources: mechanic (piezoelectric phenomenon), light (photovoltaic effect), thermic (Seebeck effect) or electromagnetic .
NANO-EH has the ambitious vision of creating a pathway for translating forefront knowledge of unique high frequency properties of emerging classes of energy harvesting nanomaterials into advanced device engineering for scalable miniaturized energy harvesting/storage submodules that are tailored for the specific needs of stand-alone, mobile or portable uses in 4IR, Connected Heath and mobile telecommunication application.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the first reporting period the project progress well toowards achieving it project goals
As part of WP1 actitivities, Management of the project; scientific and financial reporting; quality control of activities; internal communication the following progress was achieved:
• Project monitoring and control are performed through regular meetings within the NANO-EH consortium (weekly technical meetings, WP meetings, GA, and Review meetings). Minutes were produced and shared with all participants.
• Delivery of contractual deliverables and milestones as stipulated within the DoA and GA is achieved through dynamic teamwork within NANO-EH.
• Quality control of internal and contractual deliverables performed before submission of the 13 project deliverables.
• Project monitoring tools established: meetings follow-up & actions list; Deliverables & Milestones follow-up; Dissemination Exploitation Plan follow-up; Risk Register and Mitigation Plan. Risk Management and register tables were coordinated with the WP leaders to anticipate and mitigate any blocking points before they become critical.
• Project-internal documents repository platform organized and updated.
• Gender equity statistics are updated at Periodic reporting.
As part of WP2 activities Design, modelling, and simulation the following progress was achieved:
• End-User requirements and specifications for energy harvester and energy storage devices and demonstrators have been defined and there were submited as a project deliverable
• Atomistic and meso-scale design and modelling : The atomistic and meso-scale rational design and modelling have included three different material systems: i) HfZrO, ii) 2D MoS2 and iii) VO2(B) and the results and main conclusions have been reported as a project deliverable
• Design and simulation of energy harvester and energy storage devices: first designs and simulation for energy harvesters targeting the microwaves and millimeter-wave frequency bands of interest (i.e. 2G/3G/4G (1-5GHz), 5G (24-26GHz), IoT (60GHz)).
• Life Cycle Analysis and Life Cycle Cost Analysis:Preliminary LCA assessment for NANO-EH technologies and survey of LCA for competitive technologies
As part of WP3 activities (innovate material and process) in the following progress was achieved:
• Four new ALD process for nanoscale oxides ferroelectrics developed at wafer scale
• Four new ALD/CVD process for 2D materials ( 1ML, 4ML, 5ML, 7ML) developed at wafer scale
• Bio-based nanomaterials with piezoelectric properties process development.
• Ink-based materials for the spherical solar cells and printed supercapacitors .
As part of WP3 activities (to innovate at the device levels) in the following progress was achieved:
• Preliminary assesment of fabrication flow for the all devices to be developed in the project

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

NANO-EH’s target is to demonstrate an energy supply solution able to scavenge ubiquitous and pervasive energy sources, irrespective of day time. The breakthrough of this approach consists in the fact that the full multi-band RF harvester can be fabricated top-down on both sides of a Si substrate, with minimum cross-interference among the different sub-systems. This solution allows the integration on a single Si wafer of all the harvesting sub-systems that will work independently at high frequency. Possible harmonic mixing phenomena at radiofrequency (RF) will be properly taken into account and their effect will be minimised or even exploited at circuit level. The resulting multi-harvesting platform will also comprise the whole necessary electronic RF/DC circuitry and energy storage components, thus creating a fully functional multi-band front-end that can be easily integrated with off-the-shelf sensors.
NANO-EH’s multi-source harvesting platform has a great potentiality of being utilised together with dedicated or commercial sensors that will be widely deployed in the WSNs and Body Area Networks (BANs) of the future. In this respect, NANO-EH fits the related work programme since it will offer concrete market perspectives, with patenting technologies as well as standardisation, able to guarantee the proliferation of “green” all-in-one harvesting systems. A precise life cycle analysis will help the: (i) deployment of eco-design principles to optimize integrated subsystem not only from the environmental point-of-view but also from the perspective of costs reduction; (ii) demonstrators fabrication & characterization, through useful technological inputs to reduce the impact on the environment at pre-industrialisation level. The exploitation of novel “smart” biodegradable nanomaterials will enhance significantly the energy efficiency and storage capability of electromagnetic scavenging systems, with a particular attention to environmental issues, since NANO-EH will completely avoid the usage of rare earths in the targeted devices/demonstrators.

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