Renewable energy rain or sunshine - harvesting droplet kinetic energy on transparent thin films

可持续智能世界背后的“物联网”（IoT）宏伟愿景需要数十亿个传感器节点。这带来了开发具有可持续、免维护和长寿命的能量收集机制的自供电设备的紧迫性。然而，仍然缺乏所需的“全能”24/7能量收集解决方案，在混合环境条件下有效-下雨或阳光，白天和黑夜。（最近在《自然》杂志上报道，2020年第392页）雨滴能量收集技术，使其能够与太阳能采集器集成，以持续为下一代传感器节点提供雨水或阳光。此外，热能回收（报告在建筑和城市环境中的能源可持续性，第255页，2019年）也将进行调查，以潜在地为设备供电，或促进从下雨时收集的水生产淡水。核心研究将集中在创造和表征电-机械装置配置和薄膜材料性质以有效地改善整体能量收集。

The grand vision of "Internet of Things" (IoT) behind a sustainable smart world requires billions of sensor nodes. This brings the urgency of developing self-powered devices with energy harvesting mechanisms that are sustainable, maintenance free, and with long lifetimes. However, there is still a lack of desired "all-rounder" 24/7 energy harvesting solution, efficient at mixed ambient conditions - raining or sunshine, day and night.The proposed method is to integrate transparent thin film (reported recently in journal Nature, page392, 2020) rain-drop energy harvesting technologies, making it possible to be integrated with solar energy harvesters to continuously power next generation sensor nodes rain or sunshine.In addition, thermal energy recovery (reported in Energy Sustainability in Built and Urban Environments, pp255, 2019) will also be investigated, to potentially power the device, or facilitate freshwater production from the water collected during raining.The core research will focus on creating and characterising electro-mechanical device configurations and thin-film material properties to improve overall energy harvesting efficiently.