Investigation of new advanced materials and structures for development of energy harvesting devices

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Background The wholesome concept of smart life by the embedment of innumerable optoelectronic/electronic components and sensors in small devices (smart-watches, smart-phones, tablet) and larger ones (drones, electric-vehicles, robots) is fascinating and era-driven. However, a major issue encountered to these electronic devices is their dependence on a connected power source, hindering their applicability in health-monitoring/care, defence, communication, internet-of-things, and smart-cities/buildings. This has put an immense demand for energy generation which has consequently increased its price and use of non-environmentally friendly production routes to cope with the demand. To overcome this challenge, a cost-effective "greener" energy solution capable of harvesting wasted energy from surrounding environment will make cities to be more sustainable (SDG11) and less impactful on the climate through the improvement of the air quality (SDG13) also contributing to achieve more affordable and clean energy (SDG7) to power sensing platforms and electronics while reducing their downtimes.AimsThis project is aimed at investigating novel advanced materials deposited by physical vapor deposition (PVD) methods, to develop energy harvesting devices capable to power small electric devices and sensors.Project descriptionThe project will utilise state-of-the-art PVD technology available at James Watt Nanofabrication Centre (JWNC) for deposition of dielectric thin films materials at clean-room environment. Material properties will be optimised (crystallinity, surface charge density, dielectric permittivity, roughness, intrinsic stress, hardness, etc.) to use resulting films as active materials for the development of triboelectric and piezoelectric nanogenerators (TENG and PENG). For that, resulting semiconductor thin films will be characterised using techniques advanced material characterisation techniques (SEM, EDX, Raman, stress, AFM, optical profilometry, spectroscopic ellipsometry, and CPD) and will be post-treated (thermal annealing and RTA under controlled gas environment) to further optimise material properties, also at JWNC. Moreover, the project will also comprise the miniaturisation of the TENG/PENG using state-of-the-art lithography tools at JWNC to make the compatible with portable applications (e.g., powering smart phones, and wearable electronic devices). Resulting energy harvesting devices will be integrated with energy storage devices (i.e., supercapacitors) through power management modules (PMM) design to optimise the output power of the devices. Moreover, the use of Python will be essential to simulate TENG/PENG power output through the theoretical distance dependent model (DDM). Validity of the energy system will be tested in various sensing platforms, including chemical sensors, and photodetectors utilised in applications such as health monitoring and pollution monitoring (i.e., CO2 and NO detection), as well as energy sources for small robots and drones.