Miniaturised energy harvester for autonomous industrial, global retail and future smart-cities applications
Title of Proposal: “Miniaturised Energy harvester for AutoNomous INdustrial, Global retail and FUture smart-city appLications”
Acronym: MEANINGFUL

The MEANINGFUL project will establish the feasibility of using Lightricity’s miniaturised (mm^2 range) Photovoltaic Energy harvesting (EH) patented-technology as a cost-effective renewable energy source for the billions of connected ultra-low power sensors that will be located indoors. Lightricity has already demonstrated up to 6x more power density (under indoor light) than conventional Silicon-based technology, on the macro-scale (~10cm^2 EH devices). The key innovations will be on extreme miniaturisation, implementation of cost-down processes and integration with complementary ultra-low power electronics and sensors.

On the technical side, we will focus on the mass-manufacturability of ultra-high efficient micro-scale EH components and on their 3D compact integration with ultra-low quiescent power management chip-sets, rechargeable storage elements (Lithium-free storage) and ultra-low power embedded microcontrollers (incl. ARM Cortex MCUs) for sensing and RF connectivity. The objective is to achieve the sellable product stage as soon as possible, by offering an ultra-compact, efficient and low-cost battery-less solution.

On the commercial side, we will investigate the technical and cost requirements amongst our end-users (ARM, Cambridge IQ, Ahead-of-the-Curve/AotC) and in the market, in order to validate Lightricity’s technology for the most promising market segments (where there is a strong customer and technology pull): Retail (smart packaging and labels, anti-counterfeiting, smart payment cards), Industrial IoT (asset tracking, monitoring and positioning devices) and smart cities (environmental sensing, smart parking etc.). 

The project outcomes are anticipated to be a combination of physical prototypes, technical feasibility (process flow for scale-up) and market research (incl. financial feasibility).