Newark Signs Distribution Agreement with Epishine to Enable Light-Energy Harvesting Within Electronic Design

By Taryn Engmark

Associate Editor

Embedded Computing Design

August 26, 2021

News

Newark Signs Distribution Agreement with Epishine to Enable Light-Energy Harvesting Within Electronic Design

Epishine's organic solar cells are small, thin, flexible, and printed on recyclable plastic. The cells can be easily integrated into any low power electronic equipment where they convert ambient indoor light into electricity. New product designers can replace batteries in wireless sensors and similar devices with the organic solar cells, reducing the environmental impact of battery waste and saving battery replacement costs.

The new-to-market printed organic solar cells are optimized for harvesting energy from indoor, low-energy lighting, enabling organic solar power to be used everywhere. Design engineers can utilize this technology with Epishine's Light Energy Harvesting Evaluation Kit. Newark is the first high service distributor to stock products from Epishine.

The Light Energy Harvesting Evaluation Kit (EK01LEH3_6) demonstrates how Epishine's Light Energy Harvesting (LEH) modules can power indoor wireless low-power devices that are usually powered by batteries. It combines a 6-cell 50x50mm LEH module with a supercapacitor, which acts as an energy buffer and intelligent charging management system to support various output voltages and energy storage solutions. It can also use an external primary battery as a backup. The evaluation kit can deliver sufficient output current to power most low-power wireless devices such as BLE, Zigbee and LoRa. The ability to program the evaluation kit provides added flexibility and showcases the unique product integration and design possibilities of Epishine's LEH modules.

Key features include:

  • Selectable output voltage ranging from 1.8V to 3.3V in 0.1V steps
  • Up to 300mA output current
  • Optimized for indoor use (-20°C to 40°C / 0-85%RH) with illumination intensities of 20 to 1000 lux

Epishine's organic solar cells will be added to Newark's line card later this year.