Perovskite Piezoelectric-Based Flexible Energy Harvesters for Self-Powered Implantable and Wearable IoT Devices

In the ongoing fourth industrial revolution, the internet of things (IoT) will play a crucial role in collecting and analyzing information related to human healthcare, public safety, environmental monitoring and home/industrial automation. Even though conventional batteries are widely used to operate IoT devices as a power source, these batteries have a drawback of limited capacity, which impedes broad commercialization of the IoT. In this regard, piezoelectric energy harvesting technology has attracted a great deal of attention because piezoelectric materials can convert electricity from mechanical and vibrational movements in the ambient environment. In particular, piezoelectric-based flexible energy harvesters can precisely harvest tiny mechanical movements of muscles and internal organs from the human body to produce electricity. These inherent properties of flexible piezoelectric harvesters make it possible to eliminate conventional batteries for lifetime extension of implantable and wearable IoTs. This paper describes the progress of piezoelectric perovskite material-based flexible energy harvesters for self-powered IoT devices for biomedical/wearable electronics over the last decade.