A focus on sustainable energy management for self-powered IoT devices via indoor photovoltaics

Abstract

The future of information technologies lies in the form of trillions of autonomous ‘smart objects’ that can sense and communicate with their environment delivering pervasive and ubiquitous computing beyond today's imagination. Michaels et al. (H. Michaels, M. Rinderle, I. Benesperi, R. Freitag, A. Gagliardi and M. Freitag, Chem. Sci., 2023, 14, 5350, https://doi.org/10.1039/D3SC00659J) have achieved a key milestone in this context by developing an integrated autonomous and light-powered Internet of Things (IoT) system. They also show that dye-sensitized solar cells are particularly well-suited for this purpose with an indoor power conversion efficiency of 38%, far surpassing conventional silicon photovoltaics and alternative indoor photovoltaics technologies.