High-Performance Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters and Their Applications

Abstract

Energy harvesting holds great potential to achieve long-lifespan self-powered operations of wireless sensor networks, wearable devices, and medical implants, and thus has attracted substantial interest from both academia and industry. This paper presents a comprehensive review of piezoelectric energyharvesting techniques developed in the last decade. The piezoelectric effect has been widely adopted to convert mechanical energy to electricity, due to its high energy conversion efficiency, ease of implementation, and miniaturization. From the viewpoint of applications, we are most concerned about whether an energy harvester can generate sufficient power under a variable excitation. Therefore, here we concentrate on methodologies leading to high power output and broad operational bandwidth. Different designs, nonlinear methods, optimization techniques, and harvesting materials are reviewed and discussed in depth. Furthermore, we identify four promising applications: shoes, pacemakers, tire pressure monitoring systems, and bridge and building monitoring. We review new high-performance energy harvesters proposed for each application.

Bimorph piezoelectric vibration energy harvester with flexible 3D meshed-core structure for low frequency vibration

“…Moreover, the piezoelectric constant of piezoelectric polymer such as PVDF is several tens of pC/N, which is 5 to 10 times inferior to inorganic ceramic materials [28,29]. Also, the electromechanical coupling coefficient of piezoelectric polymer is as small as five times that of inorganic ceramics [28,29]. Thus, improvement of these material properties is desired.…”

Multifunctional Pacemaker Lead for Cardiac Energy Harvesting and Pressure Sensing

“…Most IMDs consume less than 1 mW over their lifetime, [ 4–6 ] with a typical cardiac pacemaker providing 0.5–2 Ah over 5–10 years [ 7,8 ] (10–100 µW power consumption per year). Given the steadily decreasing power requirements for new generations of IMDs, EH provides a compelling alternative power solution to batteries, converting the mechanical energy of the hearts motion into electrical power.…”

Hybridizing linear and nonlinear couplings for constructing two‐degree‐of‐freedom electromagnetic energy harvesters

“…[1][2][3] Since the hearts of all these networks are numerous miniaturized electronic devices each with low power consumption, extracting energy from the ambient environment to generate electricity has been considered as a promising approach for addressing the everincreasing energy demand. Nowadays, the proliferation of wireless sensor networks, internet of things, and human body sensor networks is pushing human society toward an era of intelligence, which poses a greater demand on electric energy.…”

“…Nowadays, the proliferation of wireless sensor networks, internet of things, and human body sensor networks is pushing human society toward an era of intelligence, which poses a greater demand on electric energy. [1][2][3] Since the hearts of all these networks are numerous miniaturized electronic devices each with low power consumption, extracting energy from the ambient environment to generate electricity has been considered as a promising approach for addressing the everincreasing energy demand. [4][5][6] Due to the ubiquitous nature, the abundant low-frequency mechanical energy has attracted great attention, which can be converted into electricity through various transduction mechanisms, such as electromagnetic induction, [7][8][9] piezoelectric effect, 10,11 electrostatic induction, 12,13 and triboelectric electrification.…”