Flexible waveguiding photovoltaics provide new solution for IoT energy supply

AFFORDABLE AND CLEAN ENERGY     2020/07/15
For internet-of-things (IoT) systems, the energy supply is a very critical issue as a large number of sensors, and wireless devices consume a huge amount of energy. Prof. Chen’s team from department of photonics, National Chiao Tung University have devoted themselves to the field of solar energy and tried to solve this problem by harvesting the photonic energy from the ambient conditions. In 2012, Prof. Chen and his PhD. student, Mr. Chun-Hsien Chou, invented a new flexible waveguiding photovoltaics, which can concentrate light and harvest photons with high incident angles. The results have been published in Scientific Reports and Nano Energy. With this new technology, Mr. Chou startups a company, Flexwave, which distributes photovoltaic modules for IoT systems. Currently, the products have been applied on many industrial IoT systems. The contribution of Prof. Chen and CEO of Flexwave, Mr. Chu, has been recognized by Pen Wen Yuan Foundation; they are awarded“2020 IoT Innovation Award for the Great Potential Technology”.