For decades, people have searched for ways to harvest energy from natural sources. Lately, a desire to address the issue of global warming and climate change has popularized solar or photovoltaic technology, while piezoelectric technology is being developed to power handheld devices without batteries, and thermoelectric technology is being explored to convert wasted heat, such as in automobile engine combustion, into electricity. Featuring contributions from international researchers in both academics and industry, Energy Harvesting with Functional Materials and Microsystems explains the growing field of energy harvesting from a materials and device perspective, with resulting technologies capable of enabling low-power implantable sensors or a large-scale electrical grid. In addition to the design, implementation, and components of energy-efficient electronics, the book covers current advances in energy-harvesting materials and technology, including: High-efficiency solar technologies with lower cost than existing silicon-based photovoltaics Novel piezoelectric technologies utilizing mechanical energy from vibrations and pressure The ability to harness thermal energy and temperature profiles with thermoelectric materials Whether you’re a practicing engineer, academician, graduate student, or entrepreneur looking to invest in energy-harvesting devices, this book is your complete guide to fundamental materials and applied microsystems for energy harvesting.

For decades, people have searched for ways to harvest energy from natural sources. Lately, a desire to address the issue of global warming and climate change has popularized solar or photovoltaic technology, while piezoelectric technology is being developed to power handheld devices without batteries, and thermoelectric technology is being explored to convert wasted heat, such as in automobile engine combustion, into electricity. Featuring contributions from international researchers in both academics and industry, Energy Harvesting with Functional Materials and Microsystems explains the growing field of energy harvesting from a materials and device perspective, with resulting technologies capable of enabling low-power implantable sensors or a large-scale electrical grid. In addition to the design, implementation, and components of energy-efficient electronics, the book covers current advances in energy-harvesting materials and technology, including: High-efficiency solar technologies with lower cost than existing silicon-based photovoltaics Novel piezoelectric technologies utilizing mechanical energy from vibrations and pressure The ability to harness thermal energy and temperature profiles with thermoelectric materials Whether you’re a practicing engineer, academician, graduate student, or entrepreneur looking to invest in energy-harvesting devices, this book is your complete guide to fundamental materials and applied microsystems for energy harvesting.

Global demand for low cost, efficient and sustainable energy production is ever increasing. Driven by recent discoveries and innovation in the science and technology of materials, applications based on functional materials are becoming increasingly important. Functional materials for sustainable energy applications provides an essential guide to the development and application of these materials in sustainable energy production.Part one reviews functional materials for solar power, including silicon-based, thin-film, and dye sensitized photovoltaic solar cells, thermophotovoltaic device modelling and photoelectrochemical cells. Part two focuses on functional materials for hydrogen production and storage. Functional materials for fuel cells are then explored in part three where developments in membranes, catalysts and membrane electrode assemblies for polymer electrolyte and direct methanol fuel cells are discussed, alongside electrolytes and ion conductors, novel cathodes, anodes, thin films and proton conductors for solid oxide fuel cells. Part four considers functional materials for demand reduction and energy storage, before the book concludes in part five with an investigation into computer simulation studies of functional materials.With its distinguished editors and international team of expert contributors, Functional materials for sustainable energy applications is an indispensable tool for anyone involved in the research, development, manufacture and application of materials for sustainable energy production, including materials engineers, scientists and academics in the rapidly developing, interdisciplinary field of sustainable energy. - An essential guide to the development and application of functional materials in sustainable energy production - Reviews functional materials for solar power - Focuses on functional materials for hydrogen production and storage, fuel cells, demand reduction and energy storage

The transformation of vibrations into electric energy through the use of piezoelectric devices is an exciting and rapidly developing area of research with a widening range of applications constantly materialising. With Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting, world-leading researchers provide a timely and comprehensive coverage of the electromechanical modelling and applications of piezoelectric energy harvesters. They present principal modelling approaches, synthesizing fundamental material related to mechanical, aerospace, civil, electrical and materials engineering disciplines for vibration-based energy harvesting using piezoelectric transduction. Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting provides the first comprehensive treatment of distributed-parameter electromechanical modelling for piezoelectric energy harvesting with extensive case studies including experimental validations, and is the first book to address modelling of various forms of excitation in piezoelectric energy harvesting, ranging from airflow excitation to moving loads, thus ensuring its relevance to engineers in fields as disparate as aerospace engineering and civil engineering. Coverage includes: Analytical and approximate analytical distributed-parameter electromechanical models with illustrative theoretical case studies as well as extensive experimental validations Several problems of piezoelectric energy harvesting ranging from simple harmonic excitation to random vibrations Details of introducing and modelling piezoelectric coupling for various problems Modelling and exploiting nonlinear dynamics for performance enhancement, supported with experimental verifications Applications ranging from moving load excitation of slender bridges to airflow excitation of aeroelastic sections A review of standard nonlinear energy harvesting circuits with modelling aspects.

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have had a profound impact on a wide range of applications. The degree of miniaturization made possible by MEMS technology has significantly improved the functionalities of many systems, and the performance of MEMS has steadily improved as its uses augment. Notably, MEMS sensors have been prevalent in motion sensing applications for decades, and the sensing mechanisms leveraged by MEMS have been continuously extended to applications spanning the detection of gases, magnetic fields, electromagnetic radiation, and more. In parallel, MEMS resonators have become an emerging field of MEMS and affected subfields such as electronic timing and filtering, and energy harvesting. They have, in addition, enabled a wide range of resonant sensors. For many years now, MEMS have been the basis of various industrial successes, often building on novel academic research. Accordingly, this Special Issue explores many research innovations in MEMS sensors and resonators, from biomedical applications to energy harvesting, gas sensing, resonant sensing, and timing.

Transport Phenomena in Micro- and Nanoscale Functional Materials and Devices offers a pragmatic view on transport phenomena for micro- and nanoscale materials and devices, both as a research tool and as a means to implant new functions in materials. Chapters emphasize transport properties (TP) as a research tool at the micro/nano level and give an experimental view on underlying techniques. The relevance of TP is highlighted through the interplay between a micro/nanocarrier's characteristics and media characteristics: long/short-range order and disorder excitations, couplings, and in energy conversions. Later sections contain case studies on the role of transport properties in functional nanomaterials. This includes transport in thin films and nanostructures, from nanogranular films, to graphene and 2D semiconductors and spintronics, and from read heads, MRAMs and sensors, to nano-oscillators and energy conversion, from figures of merit, micro-coolers and micro-heaters, to spincaloritronics. - Presents a pragmatic description of electrical transport phenomena in micro- and nanoscale materials and devices from an experimental viewpoint - Provides an in-depth overview of the experimental techniques available to measure transport phenomena in micro- and nanoscale materials - Features case studies to illustrate how each technique works - Highlights emerging areas of interest in micro- and nanomaterial transport phenomena, including spintronics

This book investigates the fabrication of different types of flexible sensors and their subsequent implementation for energy-harvesting applications. A range of techniques, including 3D printing, soft lithography, laser ablation, micro-contract printing, screen-printing, inkjet printing and others have been used to form the flexible sensors with varied characteristics. These sensors have been used for biomedical, environmental and healthcare applications on the basis of their performances. The quality of these flexible sensors has depended on certain types of nanomaterials that have been used to synthesize the conductive parts of the prototypes. These nanomaterials have been based on different sizes and shapes, whose quality varied on the basis of certain factors like crystallinity, shapes and sizes. One of the primary utilization of these nanotechnology-based flexible sensors has been the harvesting of energy where nano-generators and nano-harvesters have been formed to generate and store energy, respectively, on small and moderate magnitudes. Mechanical and thermal energies have been harvested on the basis of the piezoelectric, pyroelectric and triboelectric effects created by the formed prototypes. The work highlights the amalgamation of these sectors to spotlight the essence of these types of sensors and their intended application.