Scalable indoor power harvesters using halide perovskites

建筑是一次能源的最大消费者；消耗了约30%的一次能源，建筑部门的二氧化碳排放量约占全球总排放量的28%。最近的研究表明，通过将物联网(IoT)等智能技术融入建筑物的能源系统，可以节省高达45%的能源。物联网是指由联网的日常电气和电子设备组成的智能网络，这些设备可以相互通信，并实时快速响应。融入物联网的智能建筑通过持续监控建筑中的不同过程和优化能源使用，具有节省有限的能源供应和减少资源、金钱和时间的浪费的前景。智能建筑将利用无数的无线传感器，如入住率、湿度、温度、邻近程度等来监控不同的过程和能源消耗。最新的市场分析(McKinsey&Company 2021)显示，到2030年，物联网的经济潜力将在5.5至12.6万亿美元之间，联网设备将超过1万亿。预计超过一半的这些设备和三分之一的经济价值潜力将来自室内环境。我们将如何为这些数十亿台互联设备供电？将这些传感器设备连接到电网是不可行的，因为它需要广泛而复杂的安装和布线，以及建筑物的重组，并限制了传感器在建筑物中的便携部署能力。电池的使用是不可持续的，因为电池的有限寿命会在电池更换期间造成服务中断，增加维护成本，并造成严重的环境问题。此外，一旦物联网达到其预计的1万亿个无线传感器节点，每天将需要数百万次电池更换，这是不可持续和不切实际的。我建议的研究将为这个问题带来一个实际的解决方案，开发廉价和环保的能源，通过收集建筑物内自由可用的能量，例如来自人造光源的光，来自电器的热能和机械能，否则这些能量就会作为浪费的能量而损失。为此，我将调整一系列电子材料的性能，这种材料被称为混合钙钛矿材料。我设想利用的两种物理特性是：(A)光伏--将光转化为电能；(B)压电--将机械振动转化为电能。我开发的混合能源收割机将通过减少物联网技术对电池的单一依赖，使其更具可持续性，并加速物联网在其他应用中的广泛接受，如制造业(工业4.0)、医疗保健、农业、精准农业、智慧城市和交通环境的完全数字化。除了物联网，我开发的混合收割机将使可穿戴设备等其他新兴技术更可持续，相关数据收集，特别是与健康监测相关的数据收集更可靠。

Buildings are the largest consumers of primary energy; consuming ~30% of it and also the building sector accounts for ~28% of total CO2 emissions globally. Recent studies have shown that by incorporating smart technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) into the buildings' energy system, energy savings of up to ~45 % are possible. IoT refers to a smart network of internet-connected everyday electrical and electronic devices which can communicate with each other and respond rapidly in real time. IoT-incorporated smart buildings have the promising potential to save our limited energy supply and reduce the waste of resources, money and time by continuously monitoring the different processes in buildings and optimising energy use. A smart building will utilise innumerable wireless sensors such as occupancy, humidity, temperature, proximity etc to monitor different processes and energy consumption. The latest market analysis (McKinsey & Company 2021) has shown that by 2030, the economic potential of IoT would range from $5.5 to 12.6 trillion and there would be more than 1 trillion connected devices. More than half of these devices and one-third of the economic value potential are expected to come from 'indoor' settings. How are we going to power these billions of connected devices? Connecting these sensor devices to the electrical grid is unfeasible as it requires extensive and complex installation and wiring, restructuring of the buildings, and limits the sensors' portable deployability across the buildings. The use of batteries is not sustainable as the limited lifespan of the batteries brings service interruptions during a battery replacement, increases maintenance costs, and poses severe environmental issues at their disposal. Moreover, once IoT has reached its projected wireless sensor nodes of one trillion, millions of battery replacements would be required per day which is unsustainable and impractical. My proposed research will bring a practical solution to this by developing inexpensive and environmentally friendly power sources by harvesting the freely available energy inside the buildings such as light from artificial light sources, heat energy and mechanical energy from electrical appliances which are otherwise lost as a wasted form of energy. For this, I will tune the properties of a family of electronic materials called 'hybrid perovskites'. The two physical properties that I envisage exploiting for this 'multiple' energy harvesting are (a) photovoltaic - converting light to electricity and (b) piezoelectricity - converting mechanical vibrations to electricity. The hybrid energy harvesters that I develop will make the IoT technology more sustainable by reducing their sole dependence on batteries, and accelerate the wide acceptance of IoT in other applications such as in complete digitisation of manufacturing (industry 4.0), health care, agriculture, precision farming, smart city and transportation settings. In addition to the IoT, the hybrid harvesters that I develop will make other emerging technologies such as Wearables more sustainable and the associated data collection, especially related to health monitoring, more reliable.