EnABLES Newsletter Issue 13 – April 2022
Contents
EnABLES Final Webinar
When: The Best-of-Webinar of the EnABLES project will take place on Tuesday 14th June at 15:00 CEST. Registration is now open
This final webinar will start with a short wrap-up of the 4½ year H2020 RIA project “Enables – European Infrastructure Powering the Internet-of-Things”, especially focusing on the different achievements during the project time regarding networking, joint research and free-access projects with external partners.
It will also give an overview of the results of the joint research activities (JRAs), which have been carried out between the project partners on the topics of energy harvesting, energy storage and micro-power management.
The webinar will additionally offer 3-4 case studies of recently finished transnational access projects, which were delivered between EnABLES partners and external companies on dedicated use cases of self-powered IoT applications.
Finally, a summary of the virtual access to different energy harvesting databases provided by the partners during the project will be presented.
EnerHarv 2022
International Energy Harvesting Workshop – Report
After a 2 year Covid19-related deferral, EnerHarv2022 finally went ahead at the ASSIST Center in NCSU (North Carolina State University) USA on 5-7 April, organised by PSMA and having EnABLES as one of its technical sponsors. This is becoming the ‘must attend’ biennial event for the ‘power IoT’ community including researchers, industry, developers, integrators and end users.
We opened daily with keynotes from Patrick Mercier (UCSD), Veena Misra (ASSIST) & Baoxing Chen (Analog Devices) giving great insight into disruptive technologies particularly in the wearables and industry 4.0 sectors. Each day we had a mix of technical sessions, demos, posters, panel sessions and of course lots of networking. Despite the COVID uncertainties and deciding at relatively short notice to proceed we had a good attendance of around 55 people from both North America & Europe.
 General co chair/host ASSIST Centre |
 CEA Leti |
 Tyndall National Institute |
EnABLES had a strong presence with 3 posters, 4 technical presentations and participation in the ‘power IoT ecosystem’ panel session. EnABLES was cited as a great mechanism to help kick-start initiatives amongst stakeholders and is particularly helpful for SMEs with there being a clear need for such a service. A ‘carousel’ of 15 of our TA (Transnational Access) feasibility studies was on display triggering many ideas amongst participants. The ‘ecosystem of stakeholder’ image from our position paper was prominently used throughout the event to encourage and inspire people to participate. EnABLES Research Infrastructure Position Paper (click to download)
Proceedings will be available on the EnerHarv website to attendees in the next 2 weeks and will become publicly available within the next 6-8 months. To get a taste for what you missed the proceedings of the inaugural EnerHarv2018 are available on the website.
EnerHarv 2024 is likely to return to Europe by which time we hope a future evolution of EnABLES will be in place to continue to build our power IoT community. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the EnerHarv committee, organisers PSMA, our industry sponsors Analog Devices, Wurth Elektronik and UBITO and technical co-sponsors ASSIST, IEEE PELS & CPSS.
Advanced single-ion conducting polymer electrolytes enabling next-generation Li-metal solid-state batteries @PoliTO
Solid-state battery technology has recently gathered considerable attention from world-leading companies (e.g. Toyota, BMW, Dyson) and remains among the most promising solutions to power the next generation of low- or zero-emission HEV or EV vehicles. Safety and high-voltage operation remain of course key metrics and the scientific community is very active in finding the best truly solid-state polymer electrolyte, a task being still very challenging. Recently, a new class of polyelectrolytes, namely “single ion conducting polyelectrolytes”, has deserved considerable attention in the field. They are composed of a polymer backbone bearing covalently bonded anionic functional groups along with free-to-move lithium counter ions responsible for cation mobility. Because of the single-ion nature, their lithium transference number values approach unity, with remarkable benefits to the electrochemical performance.
In this study, GAME Lab researchers @PoliTO (Facebook) in collaboration with Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) firstly propose the modification of single-ion conducting polyelectrolytes by designing novel block copolymers, which combine one block responsible for high ionic conductivity and the second block for improved mechanical properties and electrochemical stability, as demonstrated in real cell configuration with both high-energy cathodes and lithium metal anode. This is one of the most relevant results so far among the literature reports on truly solid-state single-ion conducting systems, which postulates the implementation of these materials in next-generation advanced, all-solid Li-metal batteries, conceived for high energy and/or power applications at enhanced safety.
Details in G. Lingua et al., Macromolecules 2021, 54, 6911−6924 – DOI:10.1021/acs.macromol.1c00981
Time to say Goodbye! … but we’ll be back
After more than four years, the EU Horizon 2020 funded EnABLES programme is coming to its end. During this time, we provided free-of-charge access to Powering the Internet of Things (IoT) expertise and facilities to more than 70 users from 36 countries all over the world. We have also provided access to vibration databases and modelling tools to 35 users.
However, all this would not have been possible without our extensive network of researchers. EnABLES has built a Powering the IoT community of nearly 600 researchers from 46 countries. Therefore, we would like to thank you all, the members of this community of researchers, for your continuous following and support.
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EnABLES has provided free-of-charge access to unique research infrastructure and expertise in six of Europe’s premier research centres on Powering the IoT. The access provided has enabled the research community to explore exciting new developments in industry and meet the challenges created in an ever-evolving and demanding digital world. The feedback from the users was always very positive and they valued the opportunity to have rapid free-of-charge access to our facilities and collaborate with our experts.
As per our position paper we are hoping to find opportunities in Horizon Europe to continue and improve on the EnABLES experience and make it a sustainable service to the Power IoT community. We shall stay in touch with all our subscribers on progression.
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