State-of-the-art in vibration-based electrostatic energy harvesting

Abstract

Recently, embedded systems and wireless sensor nodes have been gaining importance. For operating these devices several vibration-based energy harvesters have been successfully developed and reported, such as piezoelectric, electromagnetic, and electrostatic energy harvesters (EEHs). This paper presents the state-of-the-art in the field of vibration-based EEHs. Mainly, two types of EEHs, electret-free and electret-based, are reported in the literature. The developed EEHs are mostly of the centimeter scale. These energy harvesters, with resonant frequencies ranging from 2 Hz to 1.7 kHz, when subjected to excitation on the order of 0.25 g to 14.2 g, generate power that ranges from 0.46 nW to 2.1 mW.

Electromagnetic Bridge Energy Harvester Utilizing Bridge’s Vibrations and Ambient Wind for Wireless Sensor Node Application

“…Furthermore, due to the rapid developments in low power sensors, microcontrollers, conditioning circuits [6], power management circuits [7], and transmission module and because of efficient wireless sensor networks [8], the power requirement of WSNs is on a sharp decline. The energy harvesting technique [9][10][11][12][13] that is developed two decades ago has the tendency and capability to power these low power WSNs [14]. The energies, those are present in bridge's environment and can be taken into the account for energy harvesting, are vibration (vehicle-induced vibrations), acoustic (vehicle noise), wind (naturally blowing wind and air surges produced due to vehicle motion), and solar.…”

A piezoelectric based energy harvester for simultaneous energy generation and vibration isolation

“…Mechanical energy present in the vibrations of the machines listed in Table can be changed into useful electrical energy by employing electromagnetic, piezoelectric, or electrostatic energy harvesters.…”

P(VDF-TrFE) Film on PDMS Substrate for Energy Harvesting Applications

“…Piezoelectric energy harvesting devices are especially attractive due to their compact size and easy scalability and manufacturability. Among them, flexible piezoelectric material-based energy harvesters offer the advantage of being used in implantable or wearable bio-electronic devices and sensors, combined with the other advantages of piezoelectric generators, including high energy density, low mechanical damping, and easy voltage rectification [7]. Thus, they find usage in many applications including biometrics, strain monitoring, and mobile devices.…”