Micro electrostatic energy harvester with both broad bandwidth and high normalized power density

Abstract

In this paper, an electrostatic vibration energy harvester is proposed and fabricated with both broad bandwidth and high normalized power density (NPD, harvested power/volume/acceleration2). The device is made up of two parts, top movable plate and bottom fixed plate, both of which are fabricated from silicon wafers using advanced micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) technology. A CYTOP polymer layer is spray coated for an electret material as well as an adhesive layer for low temperature wafer bonding. The air damping effect in energy harvesting has been investigated. At a low pressure of 3 Pa in a vacuum chamber, maximum power output of 4.95 μW has been harvested at low vibration amplitude of 0.09 g, resulting in a bandwidth of 12 Hz and NPD of 3 mW/cm3/g2, which outperforms most of the previous harvesters. A high harvester effectiveness of 67.9% is therefore achieved. The response on random vibrations is also tested. An average output power of 2.22 μW is harvested when random vibration is applied at a frequency range of 160 ± 12.5 Hz with RMS acceleration of 10.5 m/s2. The excellent overall performance gives promising application for energy harvesting from random sources and multi-device stack for wireless sensor networks.