• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.105-113
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• 2013

In this paper a micro solar energy harvesting system with MPPT(Maximum Power Point Tracking) control using a miniature PV(photovoltaic) cell of which the output is less than 0.5V is proposed. The MPPT control is implemented using linear relationship between the open-circuit voltage of a PV cell and its MPP(Maximum Power Point) voltage such that a pilot PV cell can track the MPP of the main PV cell in real time. The proposed circuit is designed in 0.18um CMOS process. The designed chip area is $900um{\times}1370um$ including a load charge pump and pads. Measured results show that the designed system can track the MPP voltage changes with variations of light intensity. The designed circuit with MPPT control delivers MPP voltages to load even though the load is heavy such that it can supply more power when the MPPT control is applied. The proposed circuit does not require any precharged battery resulting in more suitability for miniaturized self-powered systems compared to the existing works.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.467.1-467.1
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• 2014

Quantum dots (QD) solar cells has received considerable attention due to their potential of improving the overall conversion efficiency by harvesting excess energy via multiple excitons generation (MEG). Although there have been many reports which show MEG phenomena by using optical measurement of quantum dots themselves, carrier multiplication in real QD photovoltaic devices has been sparsely reported due to difficulty in dissociation of excitons and charge collection. In this reports, heterojunction QD solar cells composed of PbS QD monolayer on highly crystalline $TiO_2$ thin films were fabricated by using Langmuir-Blodgett deposition technique to significantly reduce charge recombination at the interfaces between each QD. The PbS CQDs monolayer was characterized by using UV-vis, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The internal quantum efficiency (IQE) for the monolayer QD solar cells was obtained by measurement of external quantum efficiency and determining light absorption efficiency of active layer. Carrier multiplication was observed by measuring IQE greater than 100% over threshold photon energy. Our findings demonstrate that monolayer QD solar cell structure is potentially capable of realizing highly efficient solar cells based on carrier multiplication.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.159-166
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• 2011

Green house gas emissions are increasing as development of the industrial economy of the international community. Many countries in the world are endeavoring to reduce green house gas emissions under severe climate change. In order to protect grobal warming, government is trying to reduce green gas emissions under "Low Carbon Green Growth Policy" and investing climiate-firendly industries such as renewable energy harvesting. Renewable energy has been rapidly developing as a result of investment for development technology of using natural energy such as solar, wind, tidal, etc. There are lots of waste energy in the road space. However, nobody is not interested in waste energy from the road space. This paper present a fundamentally experimental study of energy harvesting technique to use waste energy in the road. The waste energy in the road is covered a pressure and impact of vehicles on the road, the radiant heat from asphalt pavement, road noise and vibration etc. In this study, an energy harvesting device using piezoelectric element is proposed and various tests are conducted to investigate a characteristic of this device as function of impact loading based on piezoelectric effect behavior. This paper shows the energy harvesting results of the device using domestic piezoelectirc element as a function of impact load size and pavement types.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.51-58
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• 2021

Solar water pumping system (SWPS) is reliable and beneficial for Indian farmers in irrigation and crop production without accessing utility. The capability of easy installation and deployment, makes it an attractive option in remote areas without grid access. The selection of portable solar based pumps is pertaining to its longer life and economic viability due to lower running cost. The work presented in this manuscript intends to demonstrate performance analysis of portable systems. Consequent investigation reveals PSWS as the emerging option for rural household and marginal farmers. This can be attributed to the fact that, a considerable portion (around 45.7%) of the country's land is farmland and irrigation options are yet to reach farmers who entirely rely on rain water at present for harvesting of the crops. According to census 2010-2011 tube wells are the main source for irrigation amongst all other sources followed by canals. Out of the total 64.57-million-hectare net irrigation area, 48.16% is accounted by small and marginal holdings, 43.77% by semi-medium and medium holdings, and 8.07% by large holdings. As per 2015-16 census data, nearly 100 million farming households would struggle to make ends meet. The work included in this manuscript, presents the performance of different commercial brands and different technologies of DC surface solar water micro pumping systems have been studied (specifically, the centrifugal and reciprocating type pumps have been considered for analysis). The performance of the pumping systems has been analyzed and data is evaluated in terms of quantity of water impelled for specific head. The reciprocating pump has been observed to deliver the best system efficiency.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.61-70
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• 2011

Thin film solar cells with chalcopyrite $CuInSe_2/Cu(In,Ga)Se_2$ absorber materials, commonly known as "CIS/CIGS solar cells" have recently attracted significant research interest as a potential alternative energy-harvesting system for the next generation. Among the different deposition techniques available for the CIGS absorber layer, electrodeposition is an effective and low cost alternative to vacuum based deposition methods. This article reviews progress in the area of CIGS solar cells with an emphasis on electrodeposited absorber layer. Existing challenges in fabrication of stoichiometric absorber layer are highlighted.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.9
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• pp.436-443
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• 2017

Recently, the development of new energy technologies has become a hot topic due to problems,such as global warming. Unlike renewable energy technologies, such as solar energy generation, solar power, and wind power, which are optimized to achieve medium or above output power, the output power of energy harvesting technology is very small and has not received much attention. On the other hand, as the mobile industry has been revitalized recently, the utility of energy harvesting technology has been reevaluated. In addition, the technology of tracking the maximum power point has been actively researched. This paper proposes a new MPPT(Maximum Power Point Tracking) control method for a TEM(thermoelectric module) for load resistance. The V-I curve characteristics and internal resistance of TEM were analyzed and the conventional MPPT control methods were compared. The P&O(Perturbation and Observation) control method is more accurate, but it is less economical than the CV (Constant Voltage)control method because it usestwo sensors to measure the voltage and current source. The CV control method is superior to the P&O control method in economic aspects because it uses only one voltage sensor but the MPP is not matched precisely. In this paper, a method wasdesigned to track the MPP of TEM combining the advantages of the two control method. The proposed MPPT control method wasverified by PSIM simulation and H/W implementation.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.1165-1168
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• 2014

We prepared dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with enhanced energy conversion efficiency using open-ended $TiO_2$ nanotube arrays with a $TiO_2$ scattering layer. As compared to closed-ended $TiO_2$ nanotube arrays, the energy conversion efficiency of the open-ended $TiO_2$ nanotube arrays was increased from 5.63% to 5.92%, which is an enhancement of 5.15%. With the $TiO_2$ scattering layer, the energy conversion efficiency was increased from 5.92% to 6.53%, which is an enhancement of 10.30%. After treating the open-ended $TiO_2$ nanotube arrays with $TiCl_4$, the energy conversion efficiency was increased from 6.53% to 6.89%, a 5.51% enhancement, which is attributed to improved light harvesting and increased dye adsorption.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.20-24
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• 2017

Recently, three-dimensional (3D) light harvesting structures are highly attracted because of their high light harvesting capacity and charge collection efficiencies. In this study, we have fabricated $Cu_2ZnSn(S_xSe_{1-x})_4$ based 3D thin film solar cells on PR patterned Molybdenum (Mo) substrates using photolithography technique. Specifically, Mo patterns were deposited on PR patterned Mo substrates by sputtering and the thin Cu-Zn-Sn stacked layer was deposited over this Mo patterns by sputtering technique. The stacked Zn-Sn-Cu precursor thin films were sulfo-selenized to form CZTSSe pattern. Finally, CZTSSe absorbers were coated with thin CdS layer using chemical bath deposition and ZnO window layer was deposited over CZTSSe/CdS using DC sputtering technique. Fabricated 3-D solar cells were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis, Field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) to study their structural, compositional and morphological properties, respectively. The 3% efficiency is achieved for this kind of solar cell. Further efforts will be carried out to improve the performance of solar cell through various optimizations.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.159-164
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• 2023

Solar energy harvesting IoT devices prioritize maximizing the utilization of collected energy due to the periodic recharging nature of solar energy, rather than minimizing energy consumption. Meanwhile, research on edge AI, which performs machine learning near the data source instead of the cloud, is actively conducted for reasons such as data confidentiality and privacy, response time, and cost. One such research area involves performing various audio AI applications using audio data collected from multiple IoT devices in an IoT edge computing environment. However, in most studies, IoT devices only perform sensing data transmission to the edge server, and all processes, including data preprocessing, are performed on the edge server. In this case, it not only leads to overload issues on the edge server but also causes network congestion by transmitting unnecessary data for learning. On the other way, if data preprocessing is delegated to each IoT device to address this issue, it leads to another problem of increased blackout time due to energy shortages in the devices. In this paper, we aim to alleviate the problem of increased blackout time in devices while mitigating issues in server-centric edge AI environments by determining where the data preprocessed based on the energy state of each IoT device. In the proposed method, IoT devices only perform the preprocessing process, which includes sound discrimination and noise removal, and transmit to the server if there is more energy available than the energy threshold required for the basic operation of the device.

• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.275-284
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• 2016

In the present work, ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) have been dispersed alone in the same solvent of the active layer for improving performance parameters of the organic solar cells. Different concentrations of the ZnO NPs have been blended inside active layer of the solar cell based on poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT), which forms the hole-transport network, and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM), which forms the electron-transport network. In the present investigations, the ZnO NPs may represent an efficient tool for improving light harvesting through light scattering inside active layer, electron mobility, and electron acceptance strength which tend to improve photocurrent and performance parameters of the investigated solar cell. The fill factor (FF) of the ZnO-doped solar cell increases nearly 14% compared to the non-doped solar cell when the doping is 50%. The present investigations show that ZnO NPs improve power conversion efficiency of the solar cell from 1.23% to 1.64% with increment around 25% that takes place after incorporation of 40% as a volume ratio of the ZnO NPs inside P3HT:PCBM active layer.