IIT Mandi researchers generate electrical energy from household LED light sources

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi has developed a photovoltaic material that can generate power when irradiated with electricity from household light sources such as light-emitting diodes (LED) and compact fluorescent lamps (CFL).

The findings of the research work has been published in the journal Solar Energy, co-authored by IIT Mandi, Ramanujan fellow faculty, Ranbir Singh and school of computing and electrical engineering, Satinder Kumar Sharma along with National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE), Vikrant Sharma, Gautam Buddha University (GBU), Vivek Kumar Shukla and University of North Texas, USA, Mritunjaya Parashar.

Indoor light-induced power generation will be sought in the near future due to the increasing growth in the use of smart devices in applications such as wellness and health monitoring, smart homes, logistics and smart manufacturing among others.

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The research supports internet of things (IoT) technology that are currently in use world-wide. IoT devices such as mobile phones, smart homes, and other applications are required to run independently without being dependent on electrical grids for power supply.

Light-induced power generators are viable alternatives to batteries for powering such devices. Solar cells use the light from the sun to produce power, solar light is not an eligible option due to these devices being used indoor most times. An alternative is to find methods to harness light from indoor lighting sources to generate enough power to run indoor devices such as sensors, gadgets, Wi-Fi routers, and radio-frequency identification (RFID) readers among others.

Explaining the technicalities of this work, IIT Mandi, Ranbir Singh, said: “We have synthesized a photoactive quasi-cubic structured perovskite material by incorporating Formamidinium (FA ⁺ ) cation in Methylammonium Lead Iodide (MAPbI ₃ ) perovskite material. The light absorption, morphology, charge transport, and electron trap states of the perovskites were examined and the device physics under indoor lighting conditions has been explored in detail. The fabricated PVs demonstrated a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 34.07% within indoor illumination conditions.”