SBIR Phase I: IoT2:IoT Energy and Power Systems

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be to demonstrate a new way of integrating energy harvesting technologies in standard electronic circuits. This offers the opportunity to produce small sensors and devices in remote locations that can collect information, monitor conditions, and transmit data without the need to replace batteries. Small batteries are unsuitable for electronics that are remotely deployed, driving interest to harvest electrical energy directly from the movement and vibration of machinery. Currently, energy harvesting is too large, expensive, and inefficient for practical deployment. If energy harvesting can be made small and inexpensive, it can enable a large suite of products and services for industrial, civil, and agricultural remote monitoring. This project offers the potential to bring energy harvesting to electronics in a way that allows highly efficient energy conversion from vibrating or moving machinery, while maintaining small size and low cost. The ability to embed tiny moving parts directly within printed circuits is highly innovative, and dynamic energy harvesting is an excellent application of this technology. The patented manufacturing processes can be performed using domestic electronics manufacturing infrastructure helping to bring next-generation manufacturing to the U.S. The proposed project seeks to demonstrate a new way to embed dynamic energy harvesting devices directly within printed circuit boards, enabling micro energy production at low cost and small size. The project builds on patented manufacturing processes that leverages conventional electronics manufacturing infrastructure?devices can be built having feature sizes in microns without the need for expensive silicon fabrication foundries. The project will explore designs and fabrication processes for small, efficient vibrating units, culminating in the production of multiple devices in a single small footprint circuit board. Significant effort will be on the development of small, efficient vibrating units that can be manufactured cheaply and in large quantities, yet embedded directly within printed circuits. Three manufacturing rounds are anticipated, producing real devices that can be experimentally tested and measured. The successful completion of this project will demonstrate electrical energy production in a small printed circuit board (approximately the size of a credit card), targeting 100 microwatts to power sensing and telemetry electronics.