Abstract
This paper presents design and simulation of a power electronic interface circuit for MEMS electrostatic energy harvesters. The designed circuit is applicable to highly miniaturized electrostatic harvesters with small transducer capacitances below 10 pF. It is based on comb- drive harvesters with two anti-phase capacitors that are connected as charge pumps and uses a flyback-path scheme. Controlled activation and deactivation of sub-circuits, some by help of clocking, were exploited to reduce power consumption down to 1.03 μW. Net power generation can be achieved with as low initial voltage as 3.0 V.
Highlights
Harvesting energy from the environment is not a new concept and has been widely explored in various applications such as wireless sensor nodes [1], structural health monitoring [2] or implantable biomedical devices [3]
The interface circuitry is based on the aforementioned flyback technique and automatically detects the switching instants for optimal power transfer through the flyback path without using any external control signals
Clocking technique for lowering power consumption Reduced power consumption can be obtained by clocking the enable signal of the second bump circuit, as shown in figure 1
Summary
Harvesting energy from the environment is not a new concept and has been widely explored in various applications such as wireless sensor nodes [1], structural health monitoring [2] or implantable biomedical devices [3]. This topology was further investigated by Galayko et al [10], focusing on design of the control circuit to optimize the flyback switching sequence. An interface circuit for a MEMS electrostatic energy harvester with transducer capacitance range below ∼10 pF is presented.
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