No abstract

A polymer based energy harvester with wide bandwidth is designed, fabricated and tested in this work. A polymer based structure has a lower resonance frequency compared to a silicon based structure with the same dimensions due to the much lower stiffness of polymeric materials. Therefore, a polymeric energy harvester is more useful for situations with lower ambient vibration frequencies. Aluminum nitride pads are fabricated on an SU-8 membrane to convert mechanical vibration of the membrane to electrical voltage. A new and scalable microfabrication process flow is proposed to properly fabricate piezoelectric layers on SU-8 structures. The nonlinear stiffness due to the stretching strain in the membrane provides a wider harvestable frequency bandwidth than conventional linear oscillators. Wideband energy harvesters are more useful for practical applications due to uncontrollable ambient vibration frequency. The load-deflection equation of the device is calculated using finite element simulation. This equation is then used in an analytical solution to estimate the nonlinear effect of the structure. A bandwidth of ~146 Hz is obtained for the fabricated device and a maximum open circuit voltage of 1.42 V, maximum power of 1.37 µW, and power density of 3.81 µW cm−2 were measured at terminal load of 357.4 kΩ under an excitation acceleration of 4 g. A power output of 10.1 µW and power density of 28.1 µW cm−2 was estimated using a synchronized switch harvesting on interface (SSHI) electrical interface with electrical quality factor of 5. In addition, the lumped element model has been employed to investigate the scaling effect on a polymeric circular diaphragm.

We have investigated the impact of thermal annealing gaseous atmosphere of argon, nitrogen and forming gas on the structural and optical properties of thin polycrystalline AlN films subjected to high-energy zirconium ions implantation. X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy measurements show that the structural and morphological properties of the Zr-implanted AlN films depends on the annealing gaseous environment. The post-implantation annealing under argon atmosphere yields the lowest structured surface roughness with increased grain size. Photoluminescence spectroscopy revealed multiple point defects and defect complexes related emission bands in the visible range. A series of absorption bands have been observed using photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy. The origin of the emission or absorption bands is identified and attributed to various types of point defects and defect complexes, theoretically reported for AlN. New emission and absorption peaks at 1.7 eV (730 nm) and 2.6 eV (466 nm), respectively, have been identified and attributed to the (ZrAl-VN) 0 defect complexes.