A batch-fabricated electret-biased wideband MEMS vibration energy harvester with frequency-up conversion behavior powering a UHF wireless sensor node

Abstract

This paper reports a batch-fabricated, low-frequency and wideband MEMS electrostatic vibration energy harvester (e-VEH), which implements corona-charged vertical electrets and nonlinear elastic stoppers. A numeric model is used to perform parametric study, where we observe a wideband bi-modality resulting from nonlinearity. The nonlinear stoppers improve the bandwidth and induce a frequency-up feature at low frequencies. When the e-VEH works with a bias of 45 V, the power reaches a maximum value of 6.6 μW at 428 Hz and 2.0 grms, and is above 1 μW at 50 Hz. When the frequency drops below 60 Hz, a ‘frequency-up’ conversion behavior is observed with peaks of power at 34 Hz and 52 Hz. The −3 dB bandwidth is more than 60% of its central frequency, both including and excluding the hysteresis introduced by the nonlinear stoppers. We also perform experiments with wideband Gaussian noise. The device is eventually tested with an RF data transmission setup, where a communication node with an internal temperature sensor is powered. Every 2 min, a data transmission at 868 MHz is performed by the sensor node supplied by the e-VEH, and received at a distance of up to 15 m.