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Fabrication and characterization of free-standing thick-film piezoelectric cantilevers for energy harvesting

Swee-Leong Kok, Neil M White and Nick R Harris

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Research into energy harvesting from ambient vibration sources has attracted great interest over the last few years, largely as a result of advances in the areas of wireless technology and low-power electronics. One of the mechanisms for converting mechanical vibration to electrical energy is the use of piezoelectric materials, typically operating as a cantilever in a bending mode, which generate a voltage across the electrodes when they are stressed. Typically, the piezoelectric materials are deposited on a non-electro-active substrate and are physically clamped at one end to a rigid base. The presence of the substrate does not contribute directly to the electrical output, but merely serves as a mechanical supporting platform, which can pose difficulties for integration with other microelectronic devices. The aim of this paper is to describe a novel thick-film free-standing cantilever structure that does not use a supporting platform and has the advantage of minimizing the movement constraints on the piezoelectric material, thereby maximizing the electrical output power. Two configurations of the composite cantilever structure were investigated: unimorph and multimorph. A unimorph consists of a pair of silver/palladium (Ag/Pd) electrodes sandwiching a laminar layer of lead zirconate titanate (PZT). A mulitmorph is an extended version of the unimorph with two pairs of Ag/Pd electrodes and three laminar sections of PZT.


PACS

85.50.-n Dielectric, ferroelectric, and piezoelectric devices

85.85.+j Micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS) and devices

Subjects

Electronics and devices

Nanoscale science and low-D systems

Dates

Issue 12 (December 2009)

Received 1 May 2009, in final form 14 September 2009

Published 26 October 2009



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