The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) builds on the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm, as it relies upon the scenario of having billions of interconnected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity and access to knowledge. The 4IR is a disrupting approach that will force companies in almost every domain to re-organize themselves in a more efficient way, by exploiting technological breakthroughs such us artificial intelligence (AI), wireless communication and quantum computing.

The integration of these emerging technologies into every day life requires efficient power supply solutions in computing, sensing, memory enlargement and human-machine interaction. In many current application domains, such as medical and environmental monitoring, industrial automation, wireless sensor networks, intelligent transportation systems, ambient and infrastructure monitoring etc., the need for battery-free ultralow-power devices, possibly wearable or implantable, is increasing dramatically.

One perceived bottleneck for emerging 4IR is the fact that conventional batteries are no longer sufficient to guarantee energetic autonomy to miniaturized devices/sub-systems, thus paving the way to a huge amount of research efforts in the domain of energy harvesting.

NANO-EH has the ambition of creating a multi-source energy harvester technological platform by translating forefront knowledge in novel smart nanomaterials and nanomaterial systems/structures into advanced engineering that enables efficient manufacturing processes.

NANO-EH has the ambition to open the pathway towards large scale implementation of these battery-free technologies in a wide range of commercial IoTs and wireless network of sensors (WSNs) applications. In order to achieve its goal NANO-EH exploit four classes of smart nanomaterials that are lead- and rare earth-free materials and will demonstrate their recyclability potential at module level.

NANO-EH has the ambitious vision of creating a pathway for translating forefront knowledge of unique high frequency properties of emerging classes of energy harvesting nanomaterials (HfZrO and 2D MoS2) into advanced device engineering for scalable miniaturized energy harvesting/storage submodules that are tailored for the specific needs of stand-alone, mobile or portable uses in 4IR, Connected Heath and mobile telecommunication application. It surpasses the current paradigm of energy harvesting materials by developing non-toxic and rare earth/lead-free materials exhibiting CMOS-compatibility and scalability for low cost and large-scale manufacturing.

NANO-EH More-then-More technological platform primarily exploits the abundant clean source of always-on RF energy over an extended spectrum range (2G/3G/Wi-Fi/5G) while integrating on-chip energy storage functionalities.

NANO-EH’s long-term economic impact and market creation