A Micromachined Coupled-Cantilever for Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters

Abstract

This paper presents a demonstration of the feasibility of fabricating micro-cantilever harvesters with extended stress distribution and enhanced bandwidth by exploiting an M-shaped two-degrees-of-freedom design. The measured mechanical response of the fabricated device displays the predicted dual resonance peak behavior with the fundamental peak at the intended frequency. This design has the features of high energy conversion efficiency in a miniaturized environment where the available vibrational energy varies in frequency. It makes such a design suitable for future large volume production of integrated self powered sensors nodes for the Internet-of-Things.

Keywords

• piezoelectric micro-energy harvester
• lead zirconate titanate
• bandwidth broadening
• coupled cantilevers
• enhanced stress distribution
• finite element modeling
• microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)