In this paper, we propose a piezoelectric energy harvester with a fabric textile structure for wearable applications and examine its design and characteristics as a scalable energy harvester. The device is composed of warp and weft threads made of yarn strings and piezoelectric film straps, respectively, that are woven to each other to form a stretchable textile structure. The area of the prototype device, consisting of five weft and eleven warp threads, is 15 × 33 mm2. During the stretching operation, the curvature change and resultant time-varying strain in the piezoelectric weft threads induce output power. We demonstrate that a large-area device for wearable application can be easily obtained using the proposed structure, and the output power can be increased by reducing the thread dimension and consequently increasing the density of the threads. Maximum power densities of 81 and 125 μW cm−2 were obtained from the device using warp-thread diameters of 5 and 3 mm, respectively.
In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a power-generating tactile sensor array in which an energy harvester and an array of tactile sensors are integrated in a single device. The device consists of rows and columns of piezoelectric straps woven on a mesh structure of elastic hollow tubes. The fabricated device, which includes 5 × 5 capacitive tactile sensors in an area of 9 × 9 cm 2 , is highly flexible and stretchable. When the device was stretched in a lateral direction, the maximum output voltage and power were measured as 51 V and 850 μW, respectively. In addition, the capacitance value employed as a signal for the tactile sensor operation was measured while applying a force vertically to the surface using a force gauge. The initial capacitance and sensitivity of a single cell employed as a tactile sensor were approximately 1.727 pF and 40 fF/N, respectively, within a force range of 2 N.
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