Mahyar Shirvanimoghaddam had a big question for the Young Scientists’ community on June 28, 2019. What if, he asked, we could find a way to power our IoT applications in a self-sufficient and sustainable fashion? Because there is enough energy in the environment. Therefore, if we could harvest it appropriately we could have tiny batteries self-charging themselves forever.
Imagine Batteries Self-Charging Themselves in the IoT
Mahyar Shirvanimoghaddam is an academic fellow at the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at University of Sydney. He has chosen to dedicate his life to creating self-charging batteries. This is a noble pursuit and we praise him for it.
Mahyar says we will soon be surrounded by tiny sensors and smart devices constantly monitoring our environment. Moreover, 5G and the Internet of things have potential to change and improve our quality of life. However, the catch is the batteries. Until we have batteries self-charging themselves we will face the conundrum of limited lifetime versus limited performance.
Energy-Harvesting Small Devices of the Future
Compared to this, an energy-harvesting-enabled IoT device would have potentially unlimited lifetime, Mahyar Shirvanimoghaddam imagines. It could therefore run in the background forever faithfully doing its work.
“We have piezoelectric material using an electric charge in response to applied mechanical stress to make electricity,” he explains. “Moreover, we are already using this energy to charge batteries and super-capacitors.” We should be able to hybridize solar, mechanical and thermal resources to extend IoT lifetimes, while reducing their carbon footprint too. That is, once we have our batteries self-charging for us.
Bringing Rising Stars Together, Improving the State of the World
The Young Scientist community was established in 2009 to bring rising stars together in pursuit of World Economic Forum goals. The Forum is in turn committed to improving the state of the world. It engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society, to shape global, regional and industry agendas together.
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Preview Image: Mahyar Shirvanimoghaddam
