Abstract
Traditional piezoelectric energy harvesters are made of piezoelectric ceramics with a cantilever structure, which show a low output energy density. Thus, they are difficult to meet the requirements for self-powered electronics. Herein, we report a modified barbell-shaped piezoelectric energy harvester (BSPEH) based on two d33-mode cuboid Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3–Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3–PbTiO3 multilayer single crystal stacks (ten wafers with a thickness of 0.5 mm and d33 ∼ 1300 pC/N). Due to the electrically parallel and series connections of multilayer piezoelectric elements and the high figure-of-merit d33 × g33 of the single crystal, the maximum power density of BSPEH could reach 39.7 mW cm−3 (under an acceleration of 5 g), which is much higher than that of traditional cantilever piezoelectric energy harvesters (CPEHs), ∼0.1 mW cm−3. A maximum output voltage of 50.4 Vp–p was obtained when two crystal stacks are connected in series, and a maximum output current of 880 µA can be obtained when two crystal stacks are connected in parallel. Furthermore, the energy harvesting properties of BSPEH stay almost the same after 106 vibration cycles, while the properties of CPEH decrease 20% after 105 vibration cycles. This work indicates that BSPEH has a great potential in the application of wireless sensor networks for realizing the self-power of the equipment.
Highlights
Due to the potential applications in wireless sensing technology, portable electronic devices, and the Internet of Things (IoT), the collection of thermal, light, mechanical vibration, and other energy sources in the natural environment has become a research hotspot.1–3 Among these renewable energy sources, mechanical vibration energy is not limited by the region, time, and weather and can be found everywhere in human activity, machine running, pipelines, bridges, and so on
The durability of the cantilever piezoelectric energy harvester (CPEH) and barbell-shaped piezoelectric energy harvester (BSPEH) was measured when the output voltage and the inertial force were almost the same, which proves that the BSPEH has great potential applications under large vibration amplitude excitation and long time working
According to the finite element method (FEM) results, the single crystal stacks are in a state of half compression and half tension when the BSPEH is in the transverse vibration mode [Fig. 2(a)], so the output performance of this mode has a subtraction effect
Summary
Due to the potential applications in wireless sensing technology, portable electronic devices, and the Internet of Things (IoT), the collection of thermal, light, mechanical vibration, and other energy sources in the natural environment has become a research hotspot. Among these renewable energy sources, mechanical vibration energy is not limited by the region, time, and weather and can be found everywhere in human activity, machine running, pipelines, bridges, and so on. In 2016, Wu et al. proposed a barbell-shaped energy harvester, which can effectively improve the cracking problem of the traditional cantilever structure On this basis, Gao et al. successfully increased the output voltage and power by using piezoelectric disks with separated surface electrodes. Gao et al. designed a shear-mode piezoelectric energy harvester based on the PIN-PMN-PT crystal, which obtained three times power density compared with the same structure harvester based on piezoelectric ceramics. We designed a barbell-shaped piezoelectric energy harvester (BSPEH) based on two cuboid PIN-PMNPT crystal stacks These stacks with a large piezoelectric coefficient operate in the d33-mode. The durability of the cantilever piezoelectric energy harvester (CPEH) and BSPEH was measured when the output voltage and the inertial force were almost the same, which proves that the BSPEH has great potential applications under large vibration amplitude excitation and long time working. The output characteristics are measured under two conditions: (1) two stacks connected in series and (2) two stacks connected in parallel
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