ENHANCE · Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters for Self-Powered Automotive Sensors: from Advanced Lead-Free Materials to Smart Systems

Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters for Self-Powered Automotive Sensors: from Advanced Lead-Free Materials to Smart Systems

Each new generation of cars usually offers additional functionalities, more sophisticated sensing (> 100 sensors) and communication systems. At present, car industry is desperately trying to reduce the total weight of cars and consumption, particularly of fuel in order to reduce the CO2 emission. For example, the decrease of car weight by 100 kg drops the CO2 emission by 4-6 g/km. The signal transfer and supply of the high number of sensors in a vehicle introduce a complex network of wires, which has quite an impact on the mass of vehicles (up to 50 kg, several km in length) and add complexity and costs to installation and maintenance diagnostics. Thus, simplification and miniaturization of these networks by using self-powered wireless sensors drawing the source of power from the environment are highly demanded for inaccessible locations or corrosive /harsh working conditions. The main purpose of the ENHANCE project is to create a multidisciplinary joint research activity, implying chemistry, materials science, physics, mechanics, engineering and electronics (Fig. 1), and which will be considerably more efficient than the uncoordinated efforts of individual partners in bypassing the present limitations to enable harvesters with high-power density and their systems offering stabilized output voltage in 1-3 V range and adapted to specific needs of sensors with high autonomy and working in temperature ranges from room temperature to 600 °C in vehicles. We propose to develop hybrid scavenging of energies available in the cars (heat (Th)– light (Lt) - vibrations (Vi)) and/or to use multiple conversion effects (piezoelectric (Pi) - pyroelectric (Py) – electromagnetic (EM) – photovoltaic (PV)) by the same transducer - heterostructure based on piezoelectric/ferroelectric/multiferroic crystals, films or nanostructures in line with the final goals of the project – creation of the efficient energy scavengers and with reasonable price and viable technologies of fabrication and integration for real industrial applications to stimulate the integration of newly developed products and technologies by the industry.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union