Energy Harvesting Technology Research

Abstract

Abstract. The energy harvesting technology which obtains the energy from the external environment to power the micro electronic system indirectly is becoming a hot and promising research topic. The paper deals with the concept and classification of the energy harvesting technology. Firstly, the permanent portable power sources for advanced micro electronic devices are discussed, such as the energy coming from the sun, the wind, the wave, the fluid, the thermic heat, and the electromagnetic wave electromagnetic field. Then, the energy harvesting principles and the characterization are described, and the typical devices designed recent years are introduced. IntroductionWith the fast development of microelectronics technology, the increasing complexity of the application environment of microelectronics devices and the diversification of the application fields, the higher requirements of the system performance are put forward. The traditional battery is limited in the application of micro electronic system for the defaults of the short life, limited energy storage and chemical toxicity. Therefore, how to obtain the energy from the external environment to power the micro electronic system indirectly is becoming a hot research topic [1][2][3].The technology of energy harvesting refers transforming a variety of different forms of energy to electrical energy by the use of certain energy harvesting device placed in certain circumstances, which is especially smaller power supply technology applied in agriculture, industrial and military fields of application, in the general sense, such as, the power supply of wireless sensor network node.The various forms of energy are provided in nature, which can be summarized as heat energy, electromagnetic energy and kinetic energy. Heat energy includes the temperature difference energy, solar energy and geothermal energy, electromagnetic energy includes light energy, electromagnetic waves energy and other electromagnetic energy, and kinetic energy includes the wind energy, the fluid kinetic energy, wave energy and so on according to the different sources [4][5][6].The energy harvesting technologies have been researched widely, and there are many corresponding energy harvesting devices which could work without fuel is expected to provide long-lasting supply of electrical power directly to low-power electronic components without manual maintenance. Thus, in recent years, energy harvesting device research attracted a lot of attention both in academia and industry [7][8][9].