Energy Harvesting

The first supercapacitors to be commercialised were small ones for electronics. They were made in conventional capacitor formats such as axial and radial lead cylindrical and then coin cell.

For the first time, a team has experimentally measured on an atomic level how leakage currents form and how they influence the solar cell performance.

Thermal management is one of the most important topics in a wide range of applications; from electric vehicle battery packs through to consumer electronics, there is a pressing need to dissipate heat efficiently. Thermal interface materials (TIM) come in numerous types and play a crucial role in the thermal transfer from a heat source. This article looks at what the major innovations are for these materials and why those developments are significant.

On 24-25th of February 2021 IDTechEx attended the Innovations in Large Area Electronics (InnoLAE) conference. Conference attendees were a mix of primarily early-stage companies and academics. This premium article divides a selection of the most interesting and/or commercially relevant talks into 4 sections

In February 2021, The US agency DARPA awarded contracts to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation and Martin Defense Group (formerly Navatek) to build demonstration versions of the new Manta Ray unmanned underwater vehicle with an energy-harvesting system to power it indefinitely, allowing the robot submarine to carry out missions lasting months or years without returning to base or refueling.

Unmanned Underwater Vehicles UUV are also known as Autonomous Underwater vehicles AUV. They are unmanned electric craft that carry out a host of tasks from inspecting oil rigs and whale populations to sea floor prospecting for minerals.

Among the Li-ion batteries competitors, the Redox Flow Battery (RFB) system is one of the main competitors currently approaching the market.

Thursday 25 February 2021 - Solar cars and boats are now mainstream, some never plugging in. The technology of the most advanced ones is being licensed to others, a robot shuttle being next up.

The laws of thermodynamics warn us that making electricity will always be less than 100% efficient. However rapidly we transition to renewables, it is therefore a good thing that both electronic and electrical engineering hardware have been trending to the use of much less electricity.

This video presentation shares some of the research from the new IDTechEx report "Solar Vehicles 2021-2041 2nd Edition". www.IDTechEx.com/Solar