A Novel High-Performance Dual Semicircular Arc Piezoelectric Energy Harvester

To broaden the bandwidth of the piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) and improve its power density, a dual semicircular arc PEH (DSA-PEH) is designed in this work. This harvester has three piezoelectric layer configurations: single-outer-layer, single-inner-layer, and dual-layer connected in series. A two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) lumped parametric model and an electromechanical coupling model with the rectifier circuit are developed to analyze the resonant frequency and output performance. Measured results show that the DSA-PEH with dual piezoelectric layers connected in series has the most superior performance among the three configurations. After optimizing the radian and position of the piezoelectric layers, this DSA-PEH has a broad bandwidth of 52 Hz. Meanwhile, in the 1st mode of this DSA-PEH, the maximum output power is 3.74 mW with the normalized power density (NPD) of $180.3~\mu $ W $\cdot $ g $^{\mathbf {-{2}}}\cdot $ mm $^{\mathbf {-{3}}}$ ; in the 2nd mode, the maximum output power remains at 3.54 mW, with the NPD of $170.8~\mu $ W $\cdot $ g $^{\mathbf {-{2}}}\cdot $ mm $^{\mathbf {-{3}}}$ . The DSA-PEH exhibits a broad bandwidth and high power density, enabling it to supply power effectively in environments with large frequency fluctuations. In addition, the DSA-PEH has the capability to harvest energy in multiple directions. Therefore, the DSA-PEH can be applied to many fields, such as wearable devices, microsensors, and so on.

I. Introduction

In the era of advancing electronic technology, electronic devices such as wearable devices and microsensors have low power consumption, but they require a stable and long-term power supply [1], [2], [3], [4]. Energy harvesting, on the other hand, can take energy from the surrounding environment and convert it into electrical energy to power devices. Compared to other forms of energy harvesting technologies, piezoelectric energy harvesting is widely used due to its high conversion efficiency, stability, and ease of integration in microelectromechanical systems (MEMSs) [5], [6].