Research Projects

The Internet of Things (IoT) has led to a growing interest in self-powered systems, particularly for wireless sensors, actuators, health monitoring, and other digital devices used in intelligent buildings, RFID sensors, and wearable gadgets. The use of self-power energy sources such as chemical, thermal, mechanical, and light energy is crucial for these applications. Light-harvesting photovoltaics has the potential to harvest solar/low-intensity indoor light, generating maximum electrical power that can power IoT-based electronic devices continuously. Various types of photovoltaics, such as OPVs, DSPVs, and Si-based PVs, have been tested for generating electricity from indoor lights. However, commercialized Si-based PVs show the best performance in direct sunlight but struggle under low-intensity indoor light due to short carrier lifetimes and substantial rear surface recombination. Perovskite-based PVs, particularly metal halide perovskite PVs (PPVs), have shown tremendous efficiency under indoor light sources. i-PPVs require photoactive perovskite synthesis and device architecture engineering for optimal performance. Bifacial perovskite indoor PVs offer advantages over commercially available monofacial technologies, such as high-power output, enhanced device durability, and low economic and environmental costs. However, synthesizing new perovskite materials and designing new architectures for indoor light absorption and integration with small-scale IoT systems is challenging.