MIT designs low-cost photovoltaic sensors to extend the power supply time of IoT devices

[ Instrument Network Instrument R & D ] According to expert estimates, the number of global IoT devices (including sensors that collect real-time data on infrastructure and the environment) may increase to 75 billion by 2025. However, these sensors require frequent battery replacement, which can be a problem for long-term monitoring.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed photovoltaic-powered sensors that can transmit years of data before changing batteries. Researchers have installed thin-film perovskite batteries (known for their potential low cost, flexibility, and relative ease of manufacture) as energy harvesters on inexpensive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. Researchers at MIT have designed low-cost photovoltaic sensors on RFID tags that work in daylight and dim indoor lighting, and can transmit data for many years without replacement.
The battery powers the sensor in bright sunlight and dim indoor conditions. In addition, the research team found that solar energy can provide a huge power boost to the sensors, enable greater data transmission distances, and integrate multiple sensors onto a single RFID tag.
Said Sai Nithin Kantareddy, a doctoral student at the MIT Automatic Identification Laboratory, "In the future, there may be billions of sensors around us. At this scale, a large number of batteries will be required, and these batteries must be continuously charged. However, if ambient light can be used Self-powering them will ease a lot of work, which is basically building enhanced RFID tags for various applications using energy harvesters. "
Researchers at MIT's Automatic Identification Lab and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Optoelectronics Research Lab published two papers in Advanced Functional Materials and IEEE Sensors describing the use of sensors to monitor indoor and outdoor temperature for several days method. The sensor can continuously transmit data over five times the distance of traditional RFID tags without the need for a battery. The longer data transmission range means that one reader can be used to collect data from multiple sensors simultaneously.
Depending on certain factors in the environment, such as humidity and heat, sensors can be left inside or outside for months or potentially years until they degrade enough to require replacement. This is valuable for any application that requires long-term sensing indoors and outdoors, including tracking goods in the supply chain, monitoring soil, and monitoring the energy used in buildings and home equipment.
Combining two low-cost technologies
In a recent attempt to create a self-powered sensor, other researchers have used solar cells as an energy source for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. But these are basically smaller versions of traditional solar cells, not perovskites. Kantareddy said that traditional units can be efficient, durable, and powerful under certain conditions, but not work for ubiquitous IoT sensors.
For example, traditional solar cells are bulky and expensive to manufacture, and they are not flexible and cannot be made transparent, which makes it difficult for temperature monitoring sensors placed on windows and car windshields. In fact, they are only designed to efficiently collect energy from strong sunlight rather than indoor low light.
Perovskite batteries, on the other hand, can be printed using simple roll-to-roll manufacturing techniques at a few cents per set. Thin, soft and transparent, and adjusted to harvest energy from any type of indoor and outdoor lighting.
The idea was to combine low-cost power supplies with low-cost RFID tags, which are battery-less tags used to monitor billions of products worldwide. There are tiny UHF antennas on the stickers, and each antenna costs about 3 to 5 cents.
RFID tags rely on a communication technology called "backscatter", which transmits data by reflecting a modulated wireless signal off the tag and passing it back to a reader. A wireless device called a reader (basically similar to a Wi-Fi router) performs operations on a tag. The tag powers up and scatters back a unique signal that contains information about the product being affixed.
Traditionally, tags collect a small amount of RF energy sent by the reader to power up the internal chipset that stores the data, and use the remaining energy to modulate the return signal. But this is only equivalent to a few microwatts of power, which limits their communication range to less than one meter. The researchers' sensors include an RFID tag built on a plastic substrate. The perovskite solar cell array is directly connected to the integrated circuit on the tag. As with traditional systems, the reader sweeps the entire room and every tag responds. However, instead of using the reader's energy, it took the energy from the perovskite battery to energize the circuit and send data through backscattered RF signals.
Scale efficiency
The key innovation is custom units. They are made in layers, with perovskite materials sandwiched between electrodes, cathodes and special electron-transporting layer materials. This can achieve an efficiency of about 10%, which is quite high for a perovskite battery that is still in an experimental state. This layered structure also enables researchers to adjust the optimal "band gap" of each cell, which is an electronic movement characteristic that determines the performance of the cell under different lighting conditions. They then merged the units into modules of four units.
In the "Advanced Functional Materials" paper, these modules generate 4.3 volts of electricity under one sun, which is a standard measure of how much voltage a solar cell generates in the sun. This is enough to power the circuit (about 1.5 volts), sending about 5 meters of data every few seconds. These modules have similar performance in indoor lighting. In the "IEEE Sensor" paper, it is mainly proved that the wide-gap perovskite cells have an efficiency of 18.5% to 21% under indoor fluorescent lighting. Basically, about 45 minutes of any light source will power indoor and outdoor sensors for about 3 hours.
The prototype of the RFID circuit was only used to monitor temperature. Next, the researchers aim to scale up and add more environmental monitoring sensors, such as humidity, pressure, vibration, and pollution, to the mixed environment. These sensors are deployed on a large scale, especially for long-term data collection indoors to help build algorithms, for example, to help improve the energy efficiency of smart buildings.
The researchers said, "The perovskite material we use has great potential as an effective indoor light collector. Our next step is to integrate these same technologies using printed electronics methods, making it possible to achieve extremely low-cost wireless sensor manufacturing . "
Although similar solutions have been proposed in the past, due to the small footprint of perovskite photovoltaic cells, low production costs, and the potential for roll-to-roll manufacturing on flexible substrates, using perovskite photovoltaic cells to power RFID ICs is very interesting. However, to take advantage of this idea and further influence the Internet of Things, (manufacturers) need to do more work when developing RFID with sensing capabilities.

Advertising engraving machine is divided into small power engraving machine and high-power engraving machine two categories. Advertising engraving machine used engraving: badges, modeling, steel, engraving, carving, furniture, gifts, souvenirs, handicrafts, signs, signs, Shouban, punching, printing die cutter, cutting, carving advertising words advertising light box making.


 Advertising Machine model:

X Working Area

1300mm

Y Working Area

2500mm

Lathe bed

Steel structure

Cutting speed

0-10000mm/min

Travelling speed

0-20000mm/min

Voltage and Frequency

380V/50Hz

Drive motor

M542 Stepper

Interface

USB

Arc starting way

Contactless arc starting

Driving mode

Gear wheel

Highly of Z axis

Air  automatic adjust hight controller

Plasma power source

USA import Hypertherm 65A

Cutting thickness (stainless steel)

0.3-3mm

Transmission

Square guide rail for 3 axis; gear wheel

Software

Wentai V9

Control system

DSP for plasma

Packaging size

3300*2200*1650mm

Advertising Machine

Advertising Machine,Digital Advertising Machine,Interactive Advertising Machine,Star Advertising Machine

JINAN HT MACHINERY CO.,LTD , https://www.jncncrouter.com