NANO-EH Press Release

Newly launched FET PROACTIVE project NANO-EH explores Smart Energy Harvesting for IOT
Press release

The 22nd October marked the successful kick-off meeting of the European Commission H2020 FETProactive project NANO-EH, coordinated by Tyndall National Institute, UCC, Ireland and engaging 9 European partners from IMTBucharest (Romania), University of Bologna (Italy), Università Politecnica delle Marche (Italy), Institute National de Science Appliquees de Rennes (France), Thales (France), TE-OX (France), Luna Geber Engineering (Italy), NANOM (Romania) and Vertech (France).

H2020 FETProactive NANO-EH has the ambitious vision of creating a pathway for translating European leading expertise in unique high frequency properties of emerging classes of energy harvesting nanomaterials into advanced device engineering for scalable miniaturized energy harvesting/storage submodules. Such applications will be tailored for the specific needs of stand-alone, mobile or portable uses in 4IR, Connected Heath and mobile telecommunication applications.

The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) builds on the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm, as it relies on securing billions of interconnected autonomous mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity and access to knowledge. The integration of these emerging technologies into everyday life requires efficient power supply solutions in computing, sensing, memory enlargement and human-machine interaction.

One perceived bottleneck for 4IR is that in most situations, IoT devices/ networks will be remotely deployed, so that maintenance may be either inconvenient or impossible. In particular, this implies that IoT devices either have to embed energy sources consistent with their operative lifespan or while working off grid clean and renewable energy convertors must sit on board.

Advanced engineering is used for scalable miniaturized energy harvesting submodules which are tailored for the specific needs of stand-alone, mobile or portable uses.

This smart energy harvesting for next generation IOT project surpasses the current paradigm of energy harvesting materials by developing non-toxic and rare earth/lead-free materials exhibiting CMOS-compatibility and scalability for low cost and large-scale manufacturing.

Mircea Modreanu, Principal Investigator at Tyndall National Institute-University College Cork (Ireland) and Coordinator of the project, explains NANO-EH ambition and expected impact: “The significant broadening of the wireless communication spectrum in Europe makes the radio frequency energy scavenging a highly desirable way forward for clean powering of the next-generation IoT. To enable next-generation, self-powered (autonomous) wireless devices, the key challenge is to capture energy supply from energy harvesting sources, integrating new devices for energy storage and taking into account the micro-power management unit requirements for the miniaturised system operation.”

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the FETPROACT grant agreement No 951761. For more information about NANO-EH visit: www.nano-eh.eu and https://www.linkedin.com/company/nano-eh