Self-Powered Operational Amplifying System with a Bipolar Voltage Generator Using a Piezoelectric Energy Harvester

Abstract

Piezoelectric devices previously studied usually generated a single voltage to power an electronic device. However, depending on the user’s purpose, the electronic device may need dual power supply. Here, we report a self-powered bipolar voltage generator using a piezoelectric energy harvester with two piezoelectric devices. When a force is applied to the piezoelectric energy harvester, the two piezoelectric devices separately supply positive and negative voltages to the operational amplifier that requires dual power supply to amplify an AC signal that have positive and negative polarity. At the same time, the harvester supplies additional power to an electronic device through a DC-to-DC converter with an output voltage of 3.3 V. This technique proves the feasibility of applying the piezoelectric energy harvester to operational amplifying systems in the field of sound, earthquake, and sonar that require both bipolar and single voltages without external power sources.

Piezoelectric Sensors Pressed by Human Footsteps for Energy Harvesting

“…Other studies have concentrated on electrical design to ensure stable management of the harvested power [26,29]. However, some literature has addressed mechanical and electrical designs [7,30,31].…”

A Flexible and Stretchable Self-Powered Nanogenerator in Basketball Passing Technology Monitoring

“…At present, piezoelectric materials are widely used in the sensor hardware and energy collection field [32][33][34][35]. The traditional sensors, based on the piezoelectric effect, such as piezoelectric ceramics, lead zirconate titanate, and niobate lead magnesium, have not been widely used as wearable human motion monitoring sensors, due to brittleness, deleteriousness, complex manufacturing, and tendency to corrosion [36][37][38][39][40].…”

A 40-nm CMOS Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting IC for Wearable Biomedical Applications

“…Among the three energy harvesting technologies, piezoelectric is the most widely used and researched. Through the mechanical deformation of a piezoelectric material, an electricity is generated [4,6,7]. Some of the advantages of piezoelectric energy harvesting over the two technologies are higher energy density and output voltage [4,8].…”