Energy harvesting techniques

The recent developments of the wireless implantable and wearable biosensors for POC applications enable dedicated patient health management. The future trends for POC biosensors outline the need for smaller and flexible integrated systems, new biocompatible materials applicable for different applications, new packaging techniques, energy-efficient wireless systems, improved antenna designs, and efficient wireless power transfer and energy-harvesting techniques. 

Fantozzi, F. Bartocci, P. D Alessandro, B. Testarmata, F. Fantozzi P. Carbon footprint of truffle sauce in central Italy by direct measurement of energy consumption of different olive harvesting techniques. J. Clean. Prod. 2015, 87,188-196. 

Development techniques for energy harvesting piezoelectric textiles 366... 

Electrospinning technique has been used not only for the deposition of polymeric nanofibres but also for the production of ceramic nanofibres of PZT. PZT is commonly used in micro- and macro-scale piezoelectric energy harvesting devices due to its high electro-mechanical coupling coefficient of -500-600pC ) as compared... 

For wearable systems, including textile antennas, power efficiency represents a crucial matter, especially for the so-called autonomous systems, where the necessary power for the system operation is ideally obtained entirely by means of energy harvesting [16] from the surrounding environment, and no additional power supply is needed. Even in the case of wearable systems equipped with wearable battery units, it is very important to keep power consumption as low as possible. To this aim, several techniques were recently envisaged, by means of innovative textile antennas, such as active antennas as well as the use of multiantenna-processing techniques, such as diversity with multiple wearable antennas. 

Materials used as energy harvesters usually have highly ordered stmctures to obtain the highest electrical output. Therefore, their fabrication techniques have to be precise. 

The use of electrospinning provides another technique for textile production. When a piezoelectric polymer nanocomposite is utilized in a textile within human body stimulations (heart beating or plunge moving) as a mechanical stimulator, the textile enables energy harvesting (Klimiec et al., 2008). 

---