The field of power harvesting has experienced significant growth over the past few years due to the ever-increasing desire to produce portable and wireless electronics with extended lifespans. Current portable and wireless devices must be designed to include electrochemical batteries as the power source. The use of batteries can be troublesome due to their limited lifespan, thus necessitating their periodic replacement. In the case of wireless sensors that are to be placed in remote locations, the sensor must be easily accessible or of a disposable nature to allow the device to function over extended periods of time. Energy scavenging devices are designed to capture the ambient energy surrounding the electronics and convert it into usable electrical energy. The concept of power harvesting works towards developing self-powered devices that do not require replaceable power supplies. A number of sources of harvestable ambient energy exist, including waste heat, vibration, electromagnetic waves, wind, flowing water, and solar energy. While each of these sources of energy can be effectively used to power remote sensors, the structural and biological communities have placed an emphasis on scavenging vibrational energy with piezoelectric materials. This article will review recent literature in the field of power harvesting and present the current state of power harvesting in its drive to create completely self-powered devices.

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A review of power harvesting using piezoelectric materials (2003–2006)

Piezoelectric transduction has received great attention for vibration-to-electric energy conversion over the last five years. A typical piezoelectric energy harvester is a unimorph or a bimorph cantilever located on a vibrating host structure, to generate electrical energy from base excitations. Several authors have investigated modeling of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvesters under base excitation. The existing mathematical modeling approaches range from elementary single-degree-of-freedom models to approximate distributed parameter solutions in the sense of Rayleigh–Ritz discretization as well as analytical solution attempts with certain simplifications. Recently, the authors have presented the closed-form analytical solution for a unimorph cantilever under base excitation based on the Euler–Bernoulli beam assumptions. In this paper, the analytical solution is applied to bimorph cantilever configurations with series and parallel connections of piezoceramic layers. The base excitation is assumed to be translation in the transverse direction with a superimposed small rotation. The closed-form steady state response expressions are obtained for harmonic excitations at arbitrary frequencies, which are then reduced to simple but accurate single-mode expressions for modal excitations. The electromechanical frequency response functions (FRFs) that relate the voltage output and vibration response to translational and rotational base accelerations are identified from the multi-mode and single-mode solutions. Experimental validation of the single-mode coupled voltage output and vibration response expressions is presented for a bimorph cantilever with a tip mass. It is observed that the closed-form single-mode FRFs obtained from the analytical solution can successfully predict the coupled system dynamics for a wide range of electrical load resistance. The performance of the bimorph device is analyzed extensively for the short circuit and open circuit resonance frequency excitations and the accuracy of the model is shown in all cases.

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An experimentally validated bimorph cantilever model for piezoelectric energy harvesting from base excitations

This paper reviews energy harvesting technology from mechanical vibration. Recent advances on ultralow power portable electronic devices and wireless sensor network require limitless battery life for better performance. People searched for permanent portable power sources for advanced electronic devices. Energy is everywhere around us and the most important part in energy harvesting is energy transducer. Piezoelectric materials have high energy conversion ability from mechanical vibration. A great amount of researches have been conducted to develop simple and efficient energy harvesting devices from vibration by using piezoelectric materials. Representative piezoelectric materials can be categorized into piezoceramics and piezopolymers. This paper reviews key ideas and performances of the reported piezoelectric energy harvesting from vibration. Various types of vibration devices, piezoelectric materials and mathematical modeling of vibrational energy harvestings are reviewed.

A Review of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Based on Vibration

Localized fluid flow measurements with an He-Ne laser spectrometer

Polymer based MEMS and microfluidic devices have the advantages of mechanical flexibility, lower fabrication cost and faster processing over silicon based ones. Also, many polymer materials are considered biocompatible and can be used in biological applications. A valuable class of polymers for microfabricated devices is piezoelectric functional polymers. In addition to the normal advantages of polymers, piezoelectric polymers can be directly used as an active material in different transduction applications. This paper gives an overview of piezoelectric polymers based on their operating principle. This includes three main categories: bulk piezoelectric polymers, piezocomposites and voided charged polymers. State-of-the-art piezopolymers of each category are presented with a focus on fabrication techniques and material properties. A comparison between the different piezoelectric polymers and common inorganic piezoelectric materials (PZT, ZnO, AlN and PMN?PT) is also provided in terms of piezoelectric properties. The use of piezopolymers in different electromechanical devices is also presented. This includes tactile sensors, energy harvesters, acoustic transducers and inertial sensors.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0964-1726/23/3/033001/pdf

A review of piezoelectric polymers as functional materials for electromechanical transducers

This paper provides an analysis for the performance evaluation of a piezoelectric energy harvesting system using the synchronized switch harvesting on inductor (SSHI) electronic interface. In contrast with estimates based on a variety of approximations in the literature, an analytic expression of harvested power is derived explicitly and validated numerically for the SSHI system. It is shown that the electrical response using an ideal SSHI interface is similar to that using the standard interface in a strongly coupled electromechanical system operated at short circuit resonance. On the other hand, if the SSHI circuit is not ideal, the performance degradation is evaluated and classified according to the relative strength of coupling. It is found that the best use of the SSHI harvesting circuit is for systems in the mid-range of electromechanical coupling. The degradation in harvested power due to the non-perfect voltage inversion is not pronounced in this case, and a new finding shows that the reduction in power is much less sensitive to frequency deviations than that using the standard technique.

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An improved analysis of the SSHI interface in piezoelectric energy harvesting

In this paper, we present the development of two piezoelectric MEMS generators, {3–1} mode and {3–3} mode, which have the ability to scavenge mechanical energy of ambient vibrations and transform it into useful electrical power. These two piezoelectric MEMS generators are of cantilever type made by a silicon process and which can transform mechanical energy into electrical energy through its piezoelectric PZT layers. We developed a PZT deposition machine which uses an aerosol deposition method to fabricate the high-quality PZT thin film efficiently. Our experimental results show that our {3–1} mode device possesses a maximum open circuit output voltage of 2.675 VP-P and a maximum output power of 2.765 µW with 1.792 VP-P output voltage excited at a resonant frequency of 255.9 Hz under a 2.5 g acceleration level. The {3–3} mode device possessed a maximum open circuit output voltage of 4.127 VP-P and a maximum output power of 1.288 µW with 2.292 VP-P output voltage at its resonant frequency of 214 Hz at a 2g acceleration. We also compared the output characteristics of both the {3–1} mode and the {3–3} mode piezoelectric MEMS generators which were both excited at a 2g acceleration level.

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Piezoelectric MEMS generators fabricated with an aerosol deposition PZT thin film

SSHI (synchronized switch harvesting on inductor) techniques have been demonstrated to be capable of boosting power in vibration-based piezoelectric energy harvesters. However, the effect of frequency deviation from resonance on the electrical response of an SSHI system has not been taken into account from the original analysis. Here an improved analysis accounting for such an effect is proposed to investigate the electrical behavior of a series-SSHI system. The analytic expression of harvested power is proposed and validated numerically. Its performance evaluation is carried out and compared with the piezoelectric systems using either the standard or parallel-SSHI electronic interfaces. The result shows that the electrical response of an ideal series-SSHI system is in sharp contrast to that of an ideal parallel-SSHI system. The former is similar to a strongly coupled electromechanical standard system operated at the open circuit resonance, while the latter is analogous to that operated at the short circuit resonance with different magnitudes of matching impedance. In addition, the performance degradation due to non-ideal voltage inversion is also discussed. It shows that a series-SSHI system avails against the standard technique in the case of medium coupling, since its peak power is close to the ideal optimal power and the reduction in power is less sensitive to frequency deviation. However, the consideration of inevitable diode loss in practical devices favors the parallel-SSHI technique, since the frequency-insensitive feature is much more pronounced in parallel-SSHI systems than in series-SSHI systems.

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Revisit of series-SSHI with comparisons to other interfacing circuits in piezoelectric energy harvesting

Over the past years, there has been growing interests in the field of power harvesting technologies for low-power electronic devices such as wireless sensor networks and biomedical sensor applications. Methodologies of using piezoelectricity to convert mechanical power to electric power with a cantilever beam excited by external environmental vibration were widely discussed and examined. Operating in resonant mode of the cantilever beam was found to be the most efficient power harvesting condition, but in most cases that the resonant frequencies of the cantilever beam are hardly matching with the frequency of external vibration sources. The mechanical resonant has relatively high Q factor, and thus the harvesting output will be significantly lower compared to the condition when resonant matching to external vibration frequency. A tunable resonant frequency power harvesting device in cantilever beam form which will shift its resonant frequency to match that of the external vibrations will be developed and verified in this paper. This system utilizes a variable capacitive load to shift the gain curve of the cantilever beam and a low power microcontroller will sampling the external frequency and adjust the capacitive load to match external vibration frequency in real-time. The underlying design thoughts, methods developed, and preliminary experimental results will be presented. Potential applications of this newly developed power harvesting to wireless sensor network will also be detailed.

Tunable resonant frequency power harvesting devices

This paper presents analytical models for studying the transient behavior of several power harvesting circuit topologies for use with piezoelectric bending transducers. Specifically, the problem of charging a large storage capacitor, which is inherently a time-varying process, is considered. Three circuit designs are studied?direct charging, synchronized switching and discharging to a storage capacitor, and synchronized switching and discharging to a storage capacitor through an inductor (SSDCI)?and they are compared to a matched resistive load case. Analytical models are developed for these cases to predict the charging rates and output power for various values of storage capacitance and quality factor. Experimental circuit designs are given and their results are compared to the theoretical predictions. It is shown that these predictions are accurate when the losses in the circuit are considered in the model. In spite of these losses, it is demonstrated that the SSDCI design can produce about 200% the output power of the idealized, matched resistive load case throughout the charging process and substantially reduce the charging time of the storage capacitor.

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Wen-Jong Wu

Papers

An improved analysis of the SSHI interface in piezoelectric energy harvesting

Piezoelectric MEMS generators fabricated with an aerosol deposition PZT thin film

Revisit of series-SSHI with comparisons to other interfacing circuits in piezoelectric energy harvesting

Tunable resonant frequency power harvesting devices

Modeling and experimental verification of synchronized discharging techniques for boosting power harvesting from piezoelectric transducers