IoT Thrust Seminar丨Energy Harvesting Devices and Systems in the Era of Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In the rapidly advancing 5G era and beyond, a huge number of IoT devices and systems have been developed to realize versatile industrial, medical, and consumer applications. To achieve the long-term sustainability of the deployed IoT devices and systems, especially for certain remote, implantable, inaccessible, and dangerous environments, battery that needs to be frequently replaced may not be the optimized choice. Hence, finding sustainable and reliable power supply is in urgent demand. Energy harvesting devices that can scavenge other forms of energy at the ambient and then convert into electricity, show up as a promising candidate to enable self-sustainability. Other than just serving as power supplies, i.e., energy harvesters, they can also function as various self-powered devices such as sensors, actuators, and human-machine interfaces, to effectively lower down the overall power consumption of an IoT system. In this talk, I will introduce a few energy harvesting devices and systems that we have developed in the past few years, toward the realization of ambient monitoring, wearable and implantable electronics, human-machine interactions, and smart systems in the 5G and IoT era. Finally, some future perspectives will be provided to identify certain existing challenges and potential research innovations.