Recent Progress in Application-Oriented Self-Powered Microelectronics

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoTs), numerous distributed wide-area low-power electronic devices have been utilized in various fields, such as wireless monitoring sensors and wearable electronics. Due to the dispersion and mobility of microelectronic devices, their energy supply faces serious challenges. The inconvenience and non-environmental friendliness of using traditional centralized low entropy energy and chemical batteries to power distributed microelectronic devices are becoming increasingly prominent. Environmental energy harvesting technology with high entropy characteristics is considered an effective solution for low-power electronic devices. This paper comprehensively reviews the recent progress in microelectronic technologies based on energy harvesting and signal sensing. First, state-of-the-art micro-power electronic devices in humans, animals, and the environment are introduced. Secondly, the available micro-energy sources in the environmentare elaborated and summarized. Then, the principles and characteristics of ambient microenergy harvesting technologies based on different mechanisms are classified, summarized, and analyzed. In addition, this work comprehensively summarizes the applications of self-powered micro-electronics technology in 11 different fields, including human, animal, and environment. Finally, research challenges, technical difficulties, and research gaps in self-powered microelectronics based on micro-energy harvesting technology are discussed and summarized.