Title: Wideband piezoelectric energy harvester design using parallel connection of multiple beams

Authors: Sourav Naval; Prasun Kumar Sinha; Nikhil Kumar Das; Ashutosh Anand; Sudip Kundu

Addresses: Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India ' Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India ' Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India ' Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India ' Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India

Abstract: Microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based piezoelectric energy harvesters have been successful in harvesting optimum power output from the low-frequency vibrations in the environment. Their ability to operate over a wide range of frequencies is quite essential because the vibrations occurring in the environment are random and occur at different frequencies. In this paper, we try to increase the operating bandwidth of a MEMS-based energy harvester using parallel connection of multiple cantilever beam structures. The operating bandwidth of the energy harvester increases as the number of beams is increased, provided the resonant frequencies of the beams differ from each other by a sufficient margin. Here we consider the operating bandwidth of the energy harvesters to be the range of frequencies over which they generate an output voltage greater than or equal to 1 V. The single beam, parallelly connected two-beam, three-beam and four-beam structures has an operating bandwidth of 26 Hz, 27 Hz, 28 Hz, and 31 Hz, respectively. Thus, the bandwidth of parallelly connected four-beam structure is wider than that of single beam structure by 5 Hz.

Keywords: microelectromechanical system; MEMS; wideband; multi-beam; piezoelectric energy harvesters; COMSOL.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNP.2020.109545

International Journal of Nanoparticles, 2020 Vol.12 No.3, pp.206 - 223

Received: 13 May 2019
Accepted: 16 Jul 2019
Published online: 15 Sep 2020 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article