Vibration‐based piezoelectric, electromagnetic, and hybrid energy harvesters for microsystems applications: A contributed review

Abstract

Wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) and embedded microsystems have recently gained tremendous traction from researchers due to their vast sensing and monitoring applications in various fields including healthcare, academic, finance, environment, military, agriculture, retail, and consumer electronics. An essential requirement for the sustainable operation of WSN is the presence of an uninterrupted power supply; which is currently obtained from electrochemical batteries that suffer from limited life cycles and are associated with serious environmental hazards. An alternative to replacing batteries of WSNs; either the direct replacement or to facilitate battery regular recharging, is by looking into energy harvesting for its sustainable drive. Energy harvesting is a technique by which ambient energy can be converted into useful electricity, particularly for low-power WSNs and consumer electronics. In particular, vibration-based energy harvesting has been a key focus area, due to the abundant availability of vibration-based energy sources that can be easily harvested. In vibration-based energy harvesters (VEHs), different optimization techniques and design considerations are taken in order to broaden the operation frequency range through multi-resonant states, increase multi-degree-of-freedom, provide nonlinear characteristics, and implement the hybrid conversion. This comprehensive review summarizes recent developments in VEHs with a focus on piezoelectric, electromagnetic, and hybrid piezoelectric-electromagnetic energy harvesters. Various vibration and motion-induced energy harvesting prototypes have been reviewed and discussed in detail with respect to device architecture, conversion mechanism, performance parameters, and implementation. Overall sizes of most of the reported piezoelectric energy harvesters are in the millimeter to centimeter scales, with resonant frequencies in the range of 2-13 900 Hz. Maximum energy conversion for electromagnetic energy harvesters can potentially reach up to 778.01 μW/cm 3. The power produced by the reported hybrid energy harvesters (HEHs) is in the range of 35.43-4900 μW. Due to the combined piezoelectric-electromagnetic energy conversion in HEHs, these systems are capable of producing the highest power densities.

Eggshell membrane and expanded polytetrafluoroethylene piezoelectric‐enhanced triboelectric bio‐nanogenerators for energy harvesting

“…Furthermore, hybrid nanogenerators were also found to have promising energy harvesting capabilities. Hence, many researchers have attempted to fabricate hybrid nanogenerators to harness synergy and improve output performance 26‐29 . In order to leverage the advantages of both piezoelectric and triboelectric nanogenerators, the piezoelectric‐enhanced triboelectric bio‐nanogenerators (P‐TENGs) were proposed for efficient mechanical energy harvesting.…”

Analysis of Double Elastic Steel Wind Driven Magneto-Electric Vibration Energy Harvesting System

“…Therefore, this technology is not limited to theoretical predictions. In the review work of Iqbal et al [4], they concluded that due to the large amount of vibration-based energy available in the environment, the VEH has been identified as the energy harvester with the highest potential. Recently, Jiang et al [5] also reviewed the piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting technologies with magnetic coupling and determine the potential benefits of the magnetic force on energy-harvesting techniques.…”

System Implementation Trade-Offs for Low-Speed Rotational Variable Reluctance Energy Harvesters

“…The energy transducer converts energy from the physical domain to the electrical domain, generating a source-dependent output signal [ 10 , 11 ]. For kinetic energy harvesting, electromagnetic and piezoelectric energy transducers are common choices, which create an alternating current (AC) output [ 1 , 7 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. The intended system loads are commonly low-power electronic systems, such as Internet of Things (IoT) nodes or sensing systems, requiring a direct current (DC) input [ 9 ].…”