Innovative polymer-based composite systems for high-efficient energy scavenging and storage

InComEss seeks at developing efficient smart materials with energy harvesting and storage capabilities combining advanced polymer based-composite materials into a novel single/multi-source concept to harvest electrical energy from mechanical energy and/or waste heat ambient sources. Three Energy Harvesting Systems (EHSs) configurations will be realized through the combination of high performance piezoelectric (PE), thermoelectric (TE) and Thermo-Piezoelectric (TPE) generators and monolithic supercapacitors (SCs) to power selected wireless sensors nodes to be implemented in different IoT scenarios for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) in buildings and aircrafts (using a new miniature wireless Fiber Optics Sensing (FOS) interrogator) and accurate location and monitoring of vehicles through GPS and MEMS sensing.
AIMEN leads the following activities:
• Definition/Selection of materials for the Piezo- and Thermo-electrics and Supercapacitors.
• Development of lead-free Piezoelectric (PE) composite fibres by Wet-spinning & characterization of wet- and melt-spun lead-free PE composite fibres.
• Fabrication of melt-mixed n- and p-type Thermoelectric (TE) composite masterbatches.
• Lab-scale and Demo Prototypes fabrication of Electric Generators: PEG, TEG & hybrid TPEG for building, automotive and aeronautic use-case scenarios, respectively.
• Wireless GPS/MEMS sensor nodes development for its implementation in the automotive use-case and development of Wireless FOS sensor node for its implementation in the building and aeronautic use-case.
• Project Coordination.