Piezoelectric MEMS for efficient energy harvesting - PiezoMEMS

The trend of reduction in size and power consumption of sensors and associated metal oxide semiconductor circuitry has led us to a focused research about on-board power sources that can replace batteries. As a result, the most important thing in such cases has been developing on-site generators that can transform any available form of energy at that location into electrical energy.

The project developed a new piezoelectric harvester based on micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) devices and piezoelectric materials together with storage module and power circuitry. It focuses on small-scale power energy harvesting techniques (1-100µW) for autonomous operation of portable or embedded micro devices and systems. The harvester includes a MEMS device based on 20 micrometric cantilevers, covered with a piezoelectric lead-free thin film (ZnO, KNN and AlN have been tested), connected together for increasing the power density and is dedicated to powering portable biomedical devices or sensors networks. The complete device is shown in the Figure: the piezoelectric MEMS harvester (Figure – A) and the ceramic package with the electronic modules for stabilisation and storage (Figure – B). The PiezoMEMS prototype, miniaturised and lightweight - 2.5 x 3 x 1 cm and 16 grams, provided 1.8V (stabilised voltage) output, which is sufficient to power up a wide range of commercially available microcontrollers or to intermittently collect data from sensors nodes. The generated energy can also provide sufficient power for the new generations of ultra-small power integrated circuits, which are optimised to only need tens of nW to hundreds of uW of power.The results were presented within the International Workshop “Microsystems for Energy Harvesting and Environment Monitoring”, Oct. 2018, Sinaia, Romania. For more information please visit the project’s website, http://www.imt.ro/piezomems/.

Project Details