IMB-CNM coordinates the project SiNERGY

Micro and nanotechnologies have already made possible the fabrication of small, low cost and good performance sensors that are called to be protagonists of continuous monitoring scenarios and distributed intelligence paradigms (Internet of Things, Trillion Sensors). In many such applications, wired power is not feasible and batteries are normally used. However, battery replacement will eventually become impractical (economically, environmentally, and logistically) not only for sensor networks in remote places or harsh environments, but also for more standard applications if the number of nodes explodes exponentially.

Harvesting energy, tapping into environmentally available sources such as heat and vibrations, may be a good solution in man-made scenarios applications. Energy densities of 100 µW/cm2 seem appropriate for many such applications. Furthermore, coupling those harvester devices to secondary batteries to buffer enough energy to account for the power demand peaks required by the communication unit of wireless nodes could be a quite enabling energy autonomy solution.

Silicon technologies provide an enabling path to miniaturization, 3D architectures (improved energy densities), mass production with economy of scale, and the ability of power intelligence integration. Being silicon technologies the ones used for the fabrication of the sensors themselves, they are the prime candidate for building microenergy solutions of similar robustness able to power such sensors during their whole lifetime.

Duration: 1 Nov 13 - 31Oct 16

The consortium is composed of nine members:

• CSIC (ES), by means of Instituto de Microelectrónica de Barcelona (IMB-CNM)
• IREC (ES), Institut de Recerca en Energia de Catalunya
• IMEC (BE)
• IMEC-NL (NL)
• UNIMIB (IT), Università degli Studi di Milano – Bicocca
• CNR (IT), by means of Istituto per la Microelettronica e i Microsistemi (IMM)
• ELECTROLUX (IT),
• STE (IT)
• CERR (IT), Confindustria Emilia Romagna