NSF – CEHMS Planning Grant Meeting
August 19-20, 2009, Blacksburg, VA.

---

Visit the CEHMS Planning Grant Meeting page for more information and to register

Objective: CEHMS will address an important problem of our generation facing the sensor networks, wireless communication and microelectronics industry related to power source. Electrical energy harvesting from various environmental sources such as light, temperature gradient, wind, and vibrations at nano - macro scale with minimal cost will dramatically enhance the current systems and has the potential to open a whole new set of devices and functionalities such as portability for currently non-portable systems. Electric energy generation from the freely available environmental resources will lead to the development of “self-powered” systems.

Summary: Unused power exists in various forms such as industrial machines, human activity, vehicles, vibrating structures and various other environment sources.

Over the past decade, several energy harvesting approaches have been proposed using solar, thermoelectric, electromagnetic, piezoelectric, and capacitive schemes. The research in this arena has led to the development of wide variety of prototypes demonstrating feasibility of implementing energy harvesting systems in practical components and devices. Further, these prototypes have been demonstrated at various scales ranging from nano to macro scale applications. At nano/micro scale, there are a number of other possible solutions such as thin film Li-batteries, dye-sensitized TiO₂ nanoparticles, micro fuel-cells, nano-nuclear energy, and molecular power sources.  CEHMS brings together expertise in all these energy harvesting areas ranging from materials to system integration. It targets the possibility of realizing “self-powered” integrated hybrid systems. CEHMS researchers have been at the leading edge of energy harvesting technology with several years of background in industrial research. Several examples can be cited that will be directly benefited with the achievements of this center such as sensor networks embedded in smart homes, smart highways, and smart automobiles. Industrial members will benefit from the research conducted at the center in areas of materials synthesis, thin-film deposition, energy conversion devices, micro/nano electronics, electrochemical storage systems, sensor development, system design, integrated hybrid architectures, computational and theoretical modeling, and nanoscale fabrication techniques. CEHMS members will constitute from diverse spectrum of technology covering electronics, sensors, aircraft, medical, wireless communication, storage, textile, and materials.