Suspended electrodes for reducing parasitic capacitance in electret energy harvesters

Abstract

MEMS electret energy harvesting devices are believed promising to replace coin batteries in low-power consumption electronics such as wireless sensor nodes and wearable devices. However, the parasitic capacitance of the interdigital electrodes imposes significant restrictions to enhancing the power output. To address this issue, this paper presents a novel low-k electrode structure based on a new model of the parasitic capacitance in electret energy harvesters. By employing the trench-filled parylene technology, metal electrodes suspended with deep honeycomb parylene structures have been prototyped. Thanks to the high air volume fraction (76%) of the honeycomb parylene structure, the effective relative permittivity κeff surrounding the electrodes is reduced to as low as 1.8 when the air gap is 90 µm between the electret surface and the counter electrode. As a result, the parasitic capacitance in the electret energy harvester is decreased by 36% compared with that of electrodes on glass substrates, which leads to a 35% increase in the power output.