Self-powered sensors enabled by wide-bandgap perovskite indoor photovoltaic cells

TL;DR

This paper introduces high-efficiency wide-bandgap perovskite photovoltaic cells for indoor energy harvesting, enabling self-powered backscatter sensors with extended read range, low cost, and no battery replacement needed for ubiquitous indoor sensing.

Contribution

It demonstrates the development of high-efficiency wide-bandgap perovskite indoor PV cells and their integration with backscatter sensors for self-powered indoor sensing applications.

Findings

Perovskite cells achieve 21% and 18.5% efficiency under indoor lighting.

A series-connected module produces 14.5 μW power at 13.2% efficiency.

The self-powered temperature sensor has a 5.1-meter read range.

Abstract

We present a new approach to ubiquitous sensing for indoor applications, using high-efficiency and low-cost indoor perovksite photovoltaic cells as external power sources for backscatter sensors. We demonstrate wide-bandgap perovskite photovoltaic cells for indoor light energy harvesting with the 1.63eV and 1.84 eV devices demonstrate efficiencies of 21% and 18.5% respectively under indoor compact fluorescent lighting, with a champion open-circuit voltage of 0.95 V in a 1.84 eV cell under a light intensity of 0.16 mW/cm2. Subsequently, we demonstrate a wireless temperature sensor self-powered by a perovskite indoor light-harvesting module. We connect three perovskite photovoltaic cells in series to create a module that produces 14.5 uW output power under 0.16 mW/cm2 of compact fluorescent illumination with an efficiency of 13.2%. We use this module as an external power source for a battery-assisted RFID temperature sensor and demonstrate a read range by of 5.1 meters while maintaining very high frequency measurements every 1.24 seconds. Our combined indoor perovskite photovoltaic modules and backscatter radio-frequency sensors are further discussed as a route to ubiquitous sensing in buildings given their potential to be manufactured in an integrated manner at very low-cost, their lack of a need for battery replacement and the high frequency data collection possible.