Extending the magnetoelectric efficiency of an MFC/brass/NdFeB energy harvester by coupling a pair of movable magnets

Abstract

In this letter, an MFC/brass/NdFeB tip magnet three-phase cantilever beam was coupled with a pair of movable magnets to harness energy from alternating magnetic fields. By coupling with a pair of moveable magnets, both bandwidth and magnetoelectric (ME) voltage coefficient were largely increased by 25% and 87.5%, respectively, in comparison with the same harvester coupled with stationary magnets. Such improvements were attributed to magnetic energy introduced by the moving magnets. Experiments also revealed the boundary positions of external magnets (movable and stationary) where the repulsive magnetic forces jumped to the attractive ones, and the stiffness hardening switched to the softening process. These results provided a wide-band nonlinear approach to efficiently harvest/detect the low-frequency alternating magnetic field energies.