A Passive Design Scheme to Increase the Rectified Power of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters

Abstract

Piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting is becoming a promising solution to power wireless sensors and portable electronics. While miniaturizing energy harvesting systems, rectified power efficiencies from miniaturized piezoelectric transducers (PTs) are usually decreased due to insufficient voltage levels generated by the PTs. In this paper, a monolithic PT is split into several regions connected in series. The raw electrical output power is kept constant for different connection configurations, as theoretically predicted. However, the rectified power following a full-bridge rectifier (FBR), or a synchronized switch harvesting on an inductor (SSHI) rectifier, is significantly increased due to the higher voltage/current ratio of series connections. This is an entirely passive design scheme without introducing any additional quiescent power consumption, and it is compatible with most of the state-of-the-art interface circuits. Detailed theoretical derivations are provided to support the theory, and the results are experimentally evaluated using a custom microelectromechanical system PT and a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor rectification circuit. The results show that, while a PT is split into eight regions connected in series, the performance while using an FBR and an SSHI circuit is increased by 2.3× and 5.8×, respectively, providing an entirely passive approach to improving energy conversion efficiency.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TIE.2018.2798567
Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Engineering and Technology > Mechanical, Biomedical & Design
Additional Information: © 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Publication ISSN: 1557-9948
Last Modified: 26 Feb 2024 08:29
Date Deposited: 25 Mar 2019 13:51
Full Text Link: https://www.rep ... dle/1810/274073
Related URLs: https://ieeexpl ... ocument/8270670 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2018-05-01
Published Online Date: 2018-01-26
Accepted Date: 2018-01-10
Authors: Du, Sijun
Jia, Yu (ORCID Profile 0000-0001-9640-1666)
Zhao, Chun
Amaratunga, Gehan A. J.
Seshia, Ashwin A

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