Performance enhancement of MEMS-guided four beam piezoelectric transducers for energy harvesting and acceleration sensing

Abstract

In the present paper, guided four beam (G4B) piezoelectric transducers with enhanced sensitivities have been designed. Based on the suggested G4B structures, piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) and acceleration transducers with higher voltages than their previously reported counterparts and with lower displacements than the single-cantilever PEHs (SC-PEHs) have been proposed. We have shown that it is possible to arrive at much more output voltages in comparison with the conventional PEHs by redesigning the structure of the cantilever beams. In 1 g acceleration, the maximum output voltage obtained from the proposed PEHs has been 13.49 V whereas the output voltage for the conventional G4B-PEH is 2.87 V. This paper for the first time proposes G4B-PEHs with smaller displacements and larger voltages compared to a SC-PEH. The same G4B framework has been studied as a piezoelectric acceleration transducer. The effect of piezoelectric length on the extracted voltage in both unimorph and bimorph cantilevers has been discussed and the optimized length has been calculated. An analytical method is developed to compute the resonance frequencies of different beam shapes whose results are in a good agreement with numerical simulations.

Design and simulation of a flat cap mushroom shape microelectromechanical systems piezoelectric transducer with the application as hydrophone

“…It should be noted that the numerical simulation process used in this paper has been validated in our previous works on MEMS sensors and energy harvesters [32][33][34][35]. We have previously shown that our results for MEMS hydrophones are in a very close agreement with an experimentally fabricated hydrophone [36].…”

Curvature-Modulated Si Spherical Cap-Like Structure Fabricated by Multistep Ring Edge Etching

“…Microstructures based on silicon substrates are, therefore, a key issue in bulk micromachining technology. Bulk Si three-dimensional (3D) micromachined structures (e.g., cavities, grooves, through holes, and mesas) have been an area of extensive research in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) [1][2][3][4]. From the fabrication point of view, etching techniques are divided into two main categories: deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) and anisotropy wet etching.…”

Hinge-Type FBG Acceleration Sensor Based on Double Elastic Plate

“…The acceleration measurement, as an important technical means to monitor the medium-frequency and high-frequency vibration performance of engineering structures, can reflect the vibration situation of several large-scale structures [4,5] . At this stage, the electric sensor is the main instrument for acceleration measurement, and is characterized with low cost, small volume and relatively mature technology [6] ; however, in the complex situations, it also has disadvantages of poor circuit stability, large signal noise and being is susceptible to electromagnetic interference [7,8] . Compared with the traditional electrical acceleration sensor, FBG acceleration sensor has the better sensitivity and linearity, better anti-electromagnetic interference and stability, easier distribution and measurement based on several parameters [9][10][11] .…”