Enabling a wind energy harvester based on ZnO thin film as the building skin

Abstract

In this paper, a wind energy harvester, which can be used as building skin, is developed. In order to overcome the defects of traditional wind energy harvester, such as expensive and crisp, the developed harvester is designed as a circular silicon plate with several symmetrically distributed rectangular cavities which were covered with ZnO (Zinc oxide) thin film. It is verified whether the designed harvester can function in turbulence flow by theoretical analysis and finite element analysis. The acoustic measurement illustrated that the output of designed device is linear to the frequency. And, the wind fluid experiments suggested that the thin film can vibrate under a low wind velocity 1m/s and is easy to vibrate in wind turbulence. The maximum output power density is 23.39nW/cm2 with a maximum open circuit output voltage 2.81V. All of characteristics of designed harvester enable that it can be used as the building skin to harvest wind energy.