Table of contents

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 14th International Conference on Micro- and Nano-Technology for Power Generation and Energy Conversion Applications, or PowerMEMS 2014, in Awaji Island, Japan.

The aim of PowerMEM is to present the latest research results in the field of miniature, micro- and nano-scale technologies for power generation and energy conversion. The conference will also- give us the opportunity to exchange informations and new ideas in the field of Power MEMS/NEMS. The current status of the field of PowerMEMS spans the full spectrum from basic research to practical applications. We will enjoy valuable discussions not only from the viewpoint of academia but from commercial and industrial perspectives.

In the conference, three invited speakers lead the technical program. We received 172 abstracts and after a careful reviewing process by the Technical Program Committee a total of 133 papers were selected for presentation. These have been organized into 16 Oral sessions in two parallel streams and two poster sessions including some late-news papers. The oral and regular poster papers are published by the Institute of Physics (IOP). We have also organized a PowerMEMS School in Kobe-Sannomiya contiguous to the main conference. This two-day school will cover various topics of energy harvesting. World leading experts will give invited lectures on their main topics. This is a new experiment to broaden the technology remit of our conference by organizing mini symposiums that aim to gather the latest research on the following topics by the organizers: Microscale Combustion, Wideband Vibration Energy Harvesting, RF Energy Transfer and Industrial Application. We hope this, and other activities will make PowerMEMS2014 a memorable success.

One of the important programs in an international conference is the social program, and we prepare the PowerMEMS2014 banquet in the banquet room at the Westin Awaji Island Hotel. This will provide an opportunity to create strong networks between researchers. We also provide nice opportunities to experience Japanese nature and culture. The special cruise to see the magnificent whirlpool up close will definitely be one of the highlights. Additionally, we will serve Awaji's traditional performing art, Awaji Ningyo Joruri, which has a history of over 500 years and has been inherited through the generations.

There are many individuals we would like to thank for their support in organizing PowerMEMS2014. The TPC, chaired by Takayuki Fujita, have given us their valuable time and best effort in reviewing abstracts. The PowerMEMS School chair Yuji Suzuki and the expert speakers made the School possible. The local organizing committee, led by Kensuke Kanda has provided us with invaluable assistance in preparing the PowerMEMS2014 venue. The financial support from both the Tsutomu Nakauchi Foundation, the Hyogo International Association and the conference sponsors have also been gratefully appreciated. Finally, we would like to thank each of you for attending the conference and bringing your expertise. We wish you all a successful conference and an exciting and relaxing stay in Awaji Island.

All papers published in this volume of Journal of Physics: Conference Series have been peer reviewed through processes administered by the proceedings Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing.

"What if electronics devices are printed using an inkjet printer even at home?"

"What if those devices no longer need a battery?"

I will introduce two enabling technologies for the Internet of Things concept.

1. Instant Inkjet Circuits:

A low cost, fast and accessible technology to support the rapid prototyping of electronic devices. We demonstrated that "sintering-free" silver nano particle ink with a commodity inkjet printer can be used to fabricate printed circuit board and high-frequency applications such as antennas and sensors. The technology is now commercialized by AgIC, Inc.

2. Wireless Power:

Although large amounts of data can be exchanged over a wireless communication link, mobile devices are still tethered by power cables. We are trying to solve this problem by two different approaches: energy harvesting. A simple circuitry comprised of diodes and capacitor can convert ambient radio signals into DC current. Our research revealed the signals from TV tower located 6.5km apart could be used to feed 100 microwatts to power microcontrollers.

In this paper, we show experimental results of RF-DC conversion with modulated 24GHz waves. We have already developed class-F MMIC rectenna with resonators for higher harmonics at no modulated 24GHz microwave for RF energy transfer. Dimensions of the MMIC rectifying circuit is 1 mm × 3 mm on GaAs. Maximum RF-DC conversion efficiency is measured 47.9% for a 210 mW microwave input of 24 GHz with a 120 Ω load. The class-F rectenna is based on a single shunt full-wave rectifier. For future application of a simultaneous energy and information transfer system or an energy harvesting from broadcasting waves, input microwave will be modulated. In this paper, we show an experimental result of RF-DC conversion of the class-F rectenna with 24GHz waves modulated by 16QAM as 1st modulation and OFDM as 2nd modulation.

This paper proposes to improve effectiveness of supplying a sensor with energy using microwave power transmission (MPT) and energy harvesting (EH). The MPT duration should be as short as possible to avoid serious interference between the MPT and wireless local area network data transmission when co-channel operation of both microwave power transmission (MPT) and wireless data transmissions is performed. To shorten the MPT duration, we use multiple power sources such as an MPT source and an EH source to supply a sensor with power. Here, an overcharge or an energy shortage could occur at the sensor if the power supplied by both the MPT and EH sources is not adjusted appropriately. To solve this problem, the power supplied by multiple sources should be estimated precisely. In this paper, we propose a scheme for estimating the power supplied by multiple sources on the basis of an existing MPT scheduling system and then conducted an experiment using the scheme. From the experimental results, it is confirmed to estimate the power supplied by multiple sources successfully. In addition, the required MPT duration when the EH source is used is reduced compared to that when it is not used. Moreover, it is confirmed that the sensor station successfully estimates the power supplied by an MPT source and that by an EH source and adequately configures the MPT duration.

Combining wireless transmission of data and power signals enables wireless sensor networks to drive perpetually without changing batteries. To achieve the simultaneous data and power transmission, the present paper proposes power signal interference cancellation for wireless data and power transmission at the same time in the same frequency. We evaluate the performance of the proposed power signal interference cancellation using Universal Software Radio Peripheral N200 (USRP N200) software defined radio. Evaluations show that the proposed interference cancellation is feasible to receive data while transmitting power.

This paper presents a multi-transmitter, 2.43 GHz Radio-Frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) system for powering on-body devices. It is shown that under typical indoor conditions, the received power range spans several orders of magnitude from microwatts to milliwatts. A body-worn dual-polarised rectenna (rectifying antenna) is presented, designed for situations where the dominant polarization is unpredictable, as is the case for the on-body sensors. Power management circuitry is demonstrated that optimally loads the rectenna even under highly intermittent conditions, and boosts the voltage to charge an on-board storage capacitor.

This paper reports on a simple 3D metal electrode fabrication technique via inkjet printing onto a thermally contracting shape memory polymer (SMP) substrate. Inkjet printing allows for the direct patterning of structures from metal nanoparticle bearing liquid inks. After deposition, these inks require thermal curing steps to render a stable conductive film. By printing onto a SMP substrate, the metal nanoparticle ink can be cured and substrate shrunk simultaneously to create 3D metal microstructures, forming a large surface area topology well suited for energy applications. Polystyrene SMP shrinkage was characterized in a laboratory oven from 150-240°C, resulting in a size reduction of 1.97-2.58. Silver nanoparticle ink was patterned into electrodes, shrunk, and the topology characterized using scanning electron microscopy. Zinc-Silver Oxide microbatteries were fabricated to demonstrate the 3D electrodes compared to planar references. Characterization was performed using 10M potassium hydroxide electrolyte solution doped with zinc oxide (57g/L). After a 300s oxidation at 3Vdc, the 3D electrode battery demonstrated a 125% increased capacity over the reference cell. Reference cells degraded with longer oxidations, but the 3D electrodes were fully oxidized for 4 hours, and exhibited a capacity of 5.5mA-hr/cm² with stable metal performance.

This paper reports the fabrication process and testing of a bi-conductive polymer membrane (BCPM) fuel cell that integrates lateral current collectors on both sides with an ionic conductive path through the membrane. The new membrane shows major advantages over standard Nafion® membranes used in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells (PEMFCs). In addition to being mechanically stable when wet, the flexible BCPM integrates efficient thin film current collectors (ICCs) on an ionic conductive membrane with a high active area ratio. Also, ICCs leave all the surface of the electrode free to eventually integrate a more efficient water and gas management system than traditional gas diffusion layers. Moreover, the fabricated membrane has shown superior volumetric power density than standard PEMFC (0.76 vs 0.47 mW/cm²μm).

We report on the usage of Carbon Nanowalls (CNW) synthesized by a PECVD process as electrode material for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). In order to substitute the platinum based catalysts in fuel cells, graphene is a promising candidate. Carbon Nanowalls are a graphene modification with good accessibility and a controllable morphology. By controlling height and pore size, they can be optimized for different applications. A I_D/I_G ratio around 2.5 and the SEM images indicate vertical nanocrystallin graphene sheets. Tests with ferrocene as electroactive compound verify CNW suitability as electrode material. Cyclic voltammetry measurements in oxygen saturated PBS prove the catalytic activity of CNW towards ORR. The results support the feasibility of CNW as cathode in Bio Fuel Cells.

This paper reports modified graphene-based materials as metal-free electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) with outstanding electrocatalytic activity in alkaline conditions. Nitrogen-doped graphene samples are synthesized by a novel procedure. The defect density in the structure of the prepared materials is investigated by Raman spectroscopy. Further structural characterization by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals the successful nitrogen doping of graphene. The electrochemical characterization of graphene and nitrogen-doped graphene in 0.1 M KOH solution demonstrates the material's electrocatalytic activity towards ORR. For graphene an onset potential of – 0.175 V vs. Ag/AgCl reference electrode is determined, while for nitrogen-doped graphene the determined onset potential is – 0.160 V. Thus, the electrocatalytic activity of nitrogen-doped graphene towards ORR is enhanced which can be ascribed to the effect of nitrogen doping.

The work function energy harvester (WFEH) is a variable capacitance vibration energy harvester where the charging of the capacitor electrodes is driven by the work function difference of the electrode materials. In this work, we investigate operation modes of the WFEH by utilizing a macroscopic parallel plate capacitor with Cu and Al electrodes and varying plate distance. We show that by charging the electrodes of the WFEH by letting the electrode plates touch during the operation a significant output power enhancement can be achieved in comparison to the case where the electrodes are charged and discharged only through a load resistor.

In this report, a design method is proposed for in-plane MEMS electrostatic energy harvesters with comb drives. Dependent on the device layer thickness and the achievable aspect ratio of the DRIE process, either the overlapping-area-change or the gap-closing converter has higher output power than the other. Two prototypes of MEMS electret energy harvesters are developed to verify the present design method.

This experimental work investigates a technique to further improve performance of vibration energy harvesters under displacement-constrained operation. Previously, a device concept based on end-stops acting as additional transducers was developed so that the harvested power can be increased beyond the power obtained from a conventional harvester of the same size. However, there is a range of tested acceleration amplitudes in which the transducing end- stop device performs worse than the conventional device. In this paper, an approach using electric control is used to optimize the end-stop transducer performance and thereby further improve the system effectiveness under displacement constrained operation. For example, the maximum power increases by a factor of 2.4 compared to that of a conventional prototype under the same operating conditions and constrained displacement amplitude, while this value was about 1.3 for the previous technique.

To boost the output of the vibration energy harvester an order of magnitude higher, we devised a high-performance energy harvester taking advantages of the two characteristics of ionic liquid, namely variable deformation of liquid and the electrical double layer between ionic liquid and metal. The electrical double layer is approximately 1nm thick and works as insulator within the voltage range of ±2.0V. Therefore, we can obtain quite high capacitance(1- 10μ/cm²). Squeezing and drawing ionic liquid between a pair of vibrating electrodes, we can obtain a μW-class energy harvester.

This paper presents the fabrication of a new energy harvesting module that used the thermoelectric device (TED) by using molding technology. The output voltage per heater temperature of the TED module at 20 °C ambient temperature is 8mV/K and similar to the result with the aluminium heat sink which is almost the same fin size as the TED module. The accelerated environmental tests are performed on damp heat test that is an aging test under high temperature and high humidity, cold test and highly accelerated temperature and humidity stress test (HAST) for the purpose of evaluating the electrical reliability in harsh environments. Every result of tests indicates that the TED and circuit board can be properly protected from harsh temperature and humidity by using molding technology, because the output voltage of after tested modules is reduced by less than 5%.This study presents a novel fabrication method for a high reliability TED-installed module appropriate for Machine to Machine wireless sensor networks

This paper presents a theoretical demonstration of the bimetal strip heat engine working, based on the study of the thermo-mechanical instability of the pre-buckled bimetallic beams. Starting from the Euler buckling equation, this paper describes the bimetal strips like classical but non-linear thermodynamic systems, and gives the bistability criterion of such beams. Studying the thermodynamic potentials of these beams helps to evaluate the release of the kinetic energy happening during the beam snap-through, to give the Maxwell relations between each partial derivative of the thermodynamic potentials and to show that the thermal snap-through is a first-order transition according to the Ehrenfest theory. The model is then used to draw the temperature-entropy cycle of the bimetal heat engines and to evaluate the performances of these harvesters (available mechanical energy and thermodynamic cycle efficiency).

This work presents a flexible thick-film Bismuth Tellurium/Antimony Tellurium (BiTe/SbTe) thermoelectric generator (TEG) with reduced material resistivity fabricated by screen printing technology. Cold isostatic pressing (CIP) was introduced to lower the resistivity of the printed thermoelectric materials. The Seebeck coefficient (α) and the resistivity (ρ) of printed materials were measured as a function of applied pressure. A prototype TEG with 8 thermocouples was fabricated on flexible polyimide substrate. The dimension of a single printed element was 20 mm × 2 mm × 78.4 pm. The coiled-up prototype produced a voltage of 36.4 mV and a maximum power of 40.3 nW from a temperature gradient of 20 °C.

This paper describes a design procedure for an efficient body thermal energy harvesting integrated power converter. This procedure is based on loss examination for a selfpowered medical device. All optimum system parameters are calculated respecting the transducer constraints and the application form factor. It is found that it is possible to optimize converter's working frequency with proper design of its pulse generator circuit. At selected frequency, it has been demonstrated that wide area voltage doubler can be eliminated at the expense of wider switches. With this method, more than 60% efficiency is achieved in simulation for just 20mV transducer output voltage and 30% of entire chip area is saved.

The ignition process of premixed methane/air in a micro-scale chamber is simulated with the combination of surface chemistry and gas-phase reactions. The effect of different parameters on the ignition characteristics are analyzed in detail and the sensitive analysis is performed on main elementary reactions. It is found that the ignition of the mixture is inhibited by surface reaction, which mainly depends on the sticking ability of the surface on CH3 radical. The ignition inhibition can be reduced by increasing the initial temperature and pressure. The increase of equivalence ratio has small impact on ignition delay time when it is larger than stoichiometric ratio. The ignition delay time would increase significantly with surface-area-to- volume ratio. The product of sticking coefficient and surface-area-to-volume ratio can be used to measure the intensity of surface reaction. The larger the product is, the stronger the inhibition of the surface reaction on ignition has.

This paper reports a numerical study of influence of radical quenching and heat loss on bulk flame characteristics in narrow parallel channels. Flame-wall interaction is an important phenomenon on combustors. Especially, the wall effects on the flame characteristics in a small scale combustor become larger than those on normal scale one. The wall effects are caused by heat loss and surface reaction. The surface reaction on many common non-catalytic materials may weaken or quench the flames, although those for a catalytic wall can strengthen the flames. Authors have investigated the influence of the surface reaction and the heat loss on a noncatalytic wall using numerical simulation. In this study, a two-dimensional slit burner between two parallel plates with or without surface reaction is modelled. The wall temperature is 500 and 1200 K. The flame behavior and heat release rate distributions are examined when the distance between two plates is changed.

This paper outlines a mathematical framework to determine the upper bound on extractable power as a function of the forcing vibrations. In addition to determining the upper bound on power output, the method described provides insight into the dynamic transducer forces required to attain the upper bound. This relationship, between input vibration parameters and transducer force gives a critical first step in determining the optimal transducer architecture for a given vibration input. The method developed is applied to two specific vibration inputs; a single sinusoid, and the sum of two sinusoids. For the single sinusoidal case, the optimal transducer force is found to be that produced by a linear spring, resonant with the input frequency, and a linear viscous damper, with matched impedance to the mechanical damper. The solution to this first case was previously known, but has been used here to validate the methodology. The resulting transducer force for the input described by a sum of two sinusoids is found to be inherently time dependent. This time dependency shows that an active system can outperform a passive system. Furthermore, the upper bound on power output is shown to be twice that obtainable from a linear harvester centred at the lower of the two frequencies.

Energy harvesting from human motion for body worn or implanted devices faces the problem of the wearer being still, e.g. while asleep. Especially for medical devices this can become an issue if a patient is bed-bound for prolonged periods of time and the internal battery of a harvesting system is not recharged. This article introduces a mechanism for wireless energy transfer based on a previously presented energy harvesting device. The internal rotor of the energy harvester is made of mild steel and can be actuated through a magnetic reluctance coupling to an external motor. The internal piezoelectric transducer is consequently actuated and generates electricity. This paper successfully demonstrates energy transfer over a distance of 16 mm in air and an achieved power output of 85 μW at 25 Hz. The device functional volume is 1.85 cm³. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that increasing the driving frequency beyond 25 Hz did not yield a further increase in power output. Future research will focus on improving the reluctance coupling, e.g. by investigating the use of multiple or stronger magnets, in order to increase transmission distance.

We have successfully demonstrated the design and microfabrication of piezoelectric rubber bands and their application in energy harvesting from human motions. Composite polymeric and metallic microstructures with embedded bipolar charges are employed to realize the desired stretchability and electromechanical sensitivity. In the prototype demonstration, multilayer PDMS cellular structures coated with PTFE films and stretchable gold electrodes are fabricated and implanted with bipolar charges. The composite structures show elasticity of 300~600 kPa and extreme piezoelectricity of d₃₃ >2000 pC/N and d₃₁ >200 pC/N. For a working volume of 2.5cm×2.5cm×0.3mm, 10% (or 2.5mm) stretch results in effective d₃₁ of >17000 pC/N. It is estimated that electric charge of >0.2 μC can be collected and stored per breath (or 2.5cm deformation). As such, the composite piezoelectric rubber bands (with spring constants of ~200 N/m) can be mounted on elastic waistbands to harvest the circumferential stretch during breathing, or on pads around joints to harvest the elongation during limb motion. Furthermore, the wearable piezoelectric structures can be spread, stacked and connected to charge energy storages and power micro devices.

This paper proposes an innovative energy-harvesting controller to increase energy harvested from vibrations. Energy harvesting is a process that removes mechanical energy from a vibrating structure, which necessarily results in damping. The damping associated with piezoelectric energy harvesting suppresses the amplitude of mechanical vibration and reduces the harvested energy. To address this critical problem, we devise an energy-harvesting controller that maintains the vibration amplitude as high as possible to increase the harvested energy. Our proposed switching controller is designed to intentionally stop the switching action intermittently. We experimentally demonstrate that the proposed control scheme successfully increases the harvested energy. The piezoelectric voltage with the proposed controller is larger than that with the original synchronized switching harvesting on inductor (SSHI) technique, which increases the harvested energy. The stored energy with our controller is up to 5.7 times greater than that with the conventional SSHI control scheme.

Research and development into the topic of ambient assisted living has led to an increasing range of devices that facilitate a person's life. The issue of the power supply of these modern mobile systems however has not been solved satisfactorily yet. In this paper a flat inductive multi-coil harvester for integration into the shoe sole is presented. The device is designed for ambient assisted living (AAL) applications and particularly to power a self-lacing shoe. The harvester exploits the horizontal swing motion of the foot to generate energy. Stacks of opposing magnets move through a number of equally spaced coils to induce a voltage. The requirement of a flat structure which can be integrated into the shoe sole is met by a reduced form factor of the magnet stack. In order to exploit the full width of the shoe sole, supporting structures are used to parallelize the harvester and therefore increase the number of active elements, i.e. magnets and coils. The development and characterization of different harvester variations is presented with the best tested design generating an average power of up to 2.14 mW at a compact device size of 75 × 41.5 × 15 mm³ including housing.

This paper reports the experimental demonstration of a wireless sensor node only powered by an aeroacoustic energy harvesting device, meant to be installed on an aircraft outside skin. New results related to the physical characterization of the energy conversion process are presented. Optimized interface electronics has been designed, which allows demonstrating aeroacoustic power generation by supplying a commercial wireless datalogger in conditions representative of an actual flight.

We present a flexible piezoelectric generator, capable to harvest energy from human arterial pulse wave on the human wrist. Special features and advantages of the flexible piezoelectric generator include the multi-layer device design with contact windows and the simple fabrication process for the higher flexibility with the better energy harvesting efficiency. We have demonstrated the design effectiveness and the process simplicity of our skin- attachable flexible piezoelectric pulse wave energy harvester, composed of the sensitive P(VDF-TrFE) piezoelectric layer on the flexible polyimide support layer with windows. We experimentally characterize and demonstrate the energy harvesting capability of 0.2~1.0μW in the Human heart rate range on the skin contact area of 3.71cm². Additional physiological and/or vital signal monitoring devices can be fabricated and integrated on the skin attachable flexible generator, covered by an insulation layer; thus demonstrating the potentials and advantages of the present device for such applications to the flexible multi-functional selfpowered artificial skins, capable to detect physiological and/or vital signals on Human skin using the energy harvested from arterial pulse waves.

This paper presents the development of piezoelectric energy harvesters based on silicon and stainless steel substrates, which have the ability to harvest mechanical energy from surrounding vibrations and transform vibration energy into useful electrical power. Our experimental results show that the silicon-based device had a maximum output power of 0.9 μW with 1.0 V_P-P output voltage excited at 107.9 Hz under a 0.25 g vibrating source. The metal- based device had a maximum output power of 2.7 μW with 1.5 V_P-P output voltage at a vibration frequency of 108.6 Hz and 0.25 g acceleration. The areal power density was 0.02 μW mm⁻² and 0.05 μW mm-2 for the devices based on silicon and on stainless steel, respectively. The silicon- based devices broke when the device excited exceed 0.25g acceleration, while the metal-based devices can sustained for vibration level higher than 2g acceleration. The stainless steel based device is therefore proved to be much more reliable than silicon based device.

This paper demonstrates the use of passive voltage multipliers for rapid start-up of sub-milliwatt electromagnetic energy harvesting systems. The work describes circuit optimization to make as short as possible the transition from completely depleted energy storage to the first powering-up of an actively controlled switched-mode converter. The dependency of the start-up time on component parameters and topologies is derived by simulation and experimentation. The resulting optimized multiplier design reduces the start-up time from several minutes to 1 second. An additional improvement uses the inherent cascade structure of the voltage multiplier to power sub-systems at different voltages. This multi-rail start-up is shown to reduce the circuit losses of the active converter by 72% with respect to the optimized single-rail system. The experimental results provide insight into the multiplier's transient behaviour, including circuit interactions, in a complete harvesting system, and offer important information to optimize voltage multipliers for rapid start-up.

We developed self-excited vibration energy harvesters of Pb(Zr,Ti)O₃ (PZT) thin films using airflow. To enhance the self-excited vibration, we used 30-μm-thick stainless steel (SS304) foils as base cantilevers on which PZT thin films were deposited by rf-magnetron sputtering. To compensate for the initial bending of PZT/SS304 unimorph cantilever due to the thermal stress, we deposited counter PZT thin films on the back of the SS304 cantilever. We evaluated power-generation performance and vibration mode of the energy harvester in the airflow. When the angle of attack (AOA) was 20° to 30°, large vibration was generated at wind speeds over 8 m/s. By FFT analysis, we confirmed that stable self-excited vibration was generated. At the AOA of 30°, the output power reached 19 μW at wind speeds of 12 m/s.

Basic research of MEMS based micro devices for vibration energy harvesting using vinylidene fluoride / trifluoroethylene (VDF/TrFE) copolymer thin film was investigated. The VDF/TrFE copolymer thin film was formed by spin coating. Thickness of VDF/TrFE copolymer thin film was ranged from 375 nm to 2793 nm. Impedance of VDF/TrFE copolymer thin film was measured by LCR meter. Thin film in each thickness was fully poled by voltage based on C-V characteristics result. Generated power of the devices under applied vibration was observed by an oscilloscope. When the film thickness is 2793 nm, the generated power was about 0.815 μJ.

The narrow bandwidth of resonant vibration energy harvesters has long been seen as a drawback to exploitation. The narrow bandwidth is necessitated by the requirement to sufficiently amplify small source vibrations, but results in devices vulnerable to changes in excitation frequency, de-tuning due to ageing of components, and also makes efficient harvesting from sources with multiple frequency components difficult. In this paper a harvester based on a 2 degree of freedom oscillator is presented that not only enjoys the wider bandwidth of the higher order system, but configures the electromagnetic transducer in such a way that it requires no more components than the transducer of a typical single degree of freedom harvester. Theoretical models of the harvester system predict a range of possible frequency response functions dependent on easily-adjusted electrical parameters. These predictions are validated with experimental results.

Dye sensitized photovoltaic devices have been studied as transparent and low-cost solar cells. Our group have miniaturized the cells and used them as transparent optical sensors. This paper reports the design and fabrication of the cells and avoids the cross talk among cells, which was found recently and such effect provokes hardware instability.

We use these optical sensors as an eye tracking device. The sensor array detects the difference in the intensity of light reflected from the pupil and the sclera and then determines the pupil position. Each sensor consists of two electrodes and electrolyte; hence our device conformed by only four semi-circular shaped sensors on eyeglasses can detect the view angle in both horizontal and vertical directions. Manufacturing process gives us freedom to easily re-arrange, add or remove sensors.

In our prior work we had good performance in stand-alone configuration. We used specialized equipment from National Instruments for our measurements. However we found that:

A cell is not 100% independent from the others, is affected by the absence or presence of light at the neighbour cells.

When our device is connected to other electronic devices (for data processing), all cells have the same voltage among them; therefore, all cells behave the same way when any of them is affected by light.

The root cause is, due to all sensors were interconnected via a micro channel and filled with electrolyte, due to its conductive properties, electrolyte does neither need electrodes nor physical paths to conduct electricity, so it creates a liquid wire between sensors, hence the gap between them become inexistent, consequently when our device is connected to other electronic devices, due to this unique channel and by sharing a common electronic ground, this connection provokes the voltage to be the same among all sensors in the array. Our device becomes four separate voltage lines in a parallel circuit.

The device was also in short circuit provoked by some overlapping paths, despite that such paths were in different layers and separated by an adhesive film of 100pm thickness, such thickness was not large enough to creates a successful dielectric to isolate the paths.

This article introduces a MEMS batch fabrication process of micro magnet array with bipolar magnetic pole for an electromagnetic vibration energy harvester. In order to obtain the large electromotive force from large magnetic flux density change, we established the fine patterned alternating magnetized bipolar magnetic structure. The batch fabrication process of bipolar magnet array is composed of two wafers processing with S-pole and N-pole magnetization and bonding process. By the prototype fabrication of bipolar magnet with the 200 μm SN-interval, we showed the usability of the batch fabrication process of the bipolar magnet array. In addition, we estimated the generated power of energy harvester with a bipolar magnet array. Compared to a harvester with monopolar magnet array, we showed the good result for bipolar one.

An inductive energy harvesting concept for structures rotating in proximity to a stationary body is proposed. The performance of such devices is studied analytically and numerically, and an experimental proof of concept is presented, demonstrating energy output density of 1 mW/cm³ from a typical geometry and rotation scale. The proposed approach may be suitable for powering retrofitted wireless sensors on engine bodies and also on rotating parts where complex stator-rotor wiring solutions would otherwise be required.

In our last year's PowerMEMS contribution we presented a proof-of-concept of a variable reluctance harvester for the application in a railroad surveillance system. It was shown that intermittently closing a magnetic circuit could supply power output in the range of mW's. The test setup used showed unwanted energy pickup from the electro motor used. In this paper we present thorough measurements of the reluctance circuit with a compressed air motor to exclude the effects of the above mentioned magnetic stray fields. The effects of eddy currents and moment of inertia on the output power, the optimal coil position on the stators, and effects of different magnetic field strengths are studied. The gap width is set to a fixed value of 14 mm, representing a realistic scenario.

This paper addresses the electret discharge issue for liquid based electret energy harvesters. An interface structure of PDMS/PTFE polymer barrier layer between liquid and electrets is introduced, achieving 75% charge retain rate over 100h, compared with 0% without the proposed layer over 100h. Further, the PDMS/PTFE layer is introduced into liquid encapsulated energy harvester (LEEH) and is compatible with micro-fabrication process. The retain rate of device voltage is about 47%~65% over 100h. At 100h after corona charging, the device generates maximally 3.7V, 0.55μW @1Hz rotation.

This paper reports the design, analysis and experimental characterisation of a piezoelectric MEMS cantilever vibration energy harvester, the enhancement of its power output by adding various values of end mass, as well as assessing the responsiveness towards white noise. Devices are fabricated using a 0.5 μm AlN on 10 μm doped Si process. Cantilevers with 5 mm length and 2 mm width were tested at either unloaded condition (MC0: f_n 577 Hz) or subjected to estimated end masses of 2 mg (MC2: f_n 129 Hz) and 5 mg (MC5: f_n 80 Hz). While MC0 was able to tolerate a higher drive acceleration prior to saturation (7 g with 0.7 μW), MC5 exhibited higher peak power attainable at a lower input vibration (2.56 μW at 3 ms⁻²). MC5 was also subjected to band-limited (10 Hz to 2 kHz) white noise vibration, where the power response was only a fraction of its resonant counterpart for the same input: peak instantaneous power >1 μW was only attainable beyond 2 g of white noise, whereas single frequency resonant response only required 2.5 ms⁻². Both the first resonant response and the band-limited white noise response were also compared to a numerical model, showing close agreements.

This paper presents a kinetic energy harvester designed to be embedded in a hip implant which aims to operate at a low frequency associated with body motion of patients. The prototype is designed based on the constrained volume available in a hip prosthesis and the challenge is to harvest energy from low frequency movements (< 1 Hz) which is an average frequency during free walking of a patient. The concept of magnetic-force-driven energy harvesting is applied to this prototype considering the hip movements during routine activities of patients. The magnetic field within the harvester was simulated using COMSOL. The simulated resonant frequency was around 30 Hz and the voltage induced in a coil was predicted to be 47.8 mV. A prototype of the energy harvester was fabricated and tested. A maximum open circuit voltage of 39.43 mV was obtained and the resonant frequency of 28 Hz was observed. Moreover, the power output of 0.96 μW was achieved with an optimum resistive load of 250Ω.

This work reports the novel concept of frequency response widening of vibrational energy harvesters exploiting the combined effects of bistable and monostable nonlinearities in a single device. The bistability is introduced into the system by repulsive arrangement of magnets, while monostable nonlinear force through the stretching is incorporated by large deformation of two-end-fixed cantilevers. The simulation results show wider bandwidth in the bistability and stretching combined configuration compared to the bistable only or the monostable stretching only configuration.

In this study, we report an equivalent circuit model of an electrostatic energy harvester for a SPICE circuit simulator. In order to simulate a harvesting system, the output power of the device is calculated in the simulator. The capacitance between the electrodes is obtained by FEM analysis by taking the fringing effect into account and the result is applied to a sub-circuit model for the simulator. Mechanical vibrations are converted into electricity by an equivalent circuit model of a mass-spring structure and an electrostatic energy harvester. The simulated output power and output waveform correspond with the measurement results of our electrostatic energy harvester. We also simulate the operation of a harvesting system connected with a power management IC.

Self-powering is becoming an important issue for autonomous sensor systems. By having an on-the-go power source the life span increases in comparison to a limited battery source. In this paper, simulation of an innovative design for a piezoelectric energy harvester for Tire Pressure Measurement System (TPMS) is presented. The MEMS-based thin-film PZT harvester structure is in the form of a bridge with a big central seismic mass and multiple electrodes. This design takes the advantage of the S-profile bending and a short beam length to concentrate the piezoelectric effect in a small segment along the beam and maximize the power output for a given displacement. From simulation in Comsol Multiphysics, the 9mm × 5mm bridge, seismic mass of 8.7mg and resonance frequency of 615Hz, generates 1 μW by mechanical pulses excitation equivalent to driving at 60 km/h (roughly 180G).

We have presented a frequency up-converted hybrid type (Piezoelectric and Electromagnetic) vibration energy harvester that can be used in powering portable and wearable smart devices by handy motion. A transverse impact mechanism has been employed for frequency up-conversion. Use of two transduction mechanisms increases the output power as well as power density. The proposed device consists of a non-magnetic spherical ball (freely movable at handy motion frequency) to impact periodically on the parabolic top of a piezoelectric (PZT) cantilevered mass by sliding over it, allowing it to vibrate at its higher resonant frequency and generates voltage by virtue of piezoelectric effect. A magnet attached to the cantilever vibrates along with it at the same frequency and a relative motion between the magnet and a coil placed below it, induces emf voltage across the coil terminals as well. A macro-scale prototype of the harvester has been fabricated and tested by handy motion. With an optimum magnet-coil overlap, a maximum 0.98mW and 0.64mW peak powers have been obtained from the piezoelectric and the electromagnetic transducers of the proposed device while shaken, respectively. It offers 84.4μWcm⁻³ peak power density.

The characterizations for ZnO arrays on different substrates have been done with the aim of fabricating an experimental battery that uses the strain energy as energy source. The storage principle is based on a common spring which is loaded by the force associated to the energy to be harvested. By following the same principle our approach is based on pressing an array of fine wires (fws) grown vertically on two different substrate surfaces. The ZnO has been chosen as a fabrication material due to its manufacturing which is cheap and simple using the hydrothermal method. A statistical study for quantify the ZnO fws physical dimensions as density, diameters and lengths was firstly done. Secondly a mechanical study showed the mechanical behaviour of the ZnO fine wires as a unit study where boundary conditions of free- fixed and pinned-fixed were used as possible behaviours. Subsequently an electrical IV characterization was done by using an experimental compressor that allows analyse of the current response of the ZnO array to different compression distances in order to seek for a relation between mechanical and electrical properties. The thermionic-emission was considered to relate the contacted area with the current response.

This paper reports the design and testing of a power conditioning circuit for a solar powered in-car wireless tag for asset tracking and parking application. Existing long range asset tracking is based on the GSM/GPRS network, which requires expensive subscriptions. The EU FP7 project CEWITT aims at developing a credit card sized autonomous wireless tag with GNSS geo-positioning capabilities to ensure the integrity and cost effectiveness for parking applications. It was found in previous research that solar cells are the most suitable energy sources for this application. This study focused on the power electronics design for the wireless tag. A suitable solar cell was chosen for its high power density. Charging circuit, hysteresis control circuit and LDO were designed and integrated to meet the system requirement. Test results showed that charging efficiency of 80 % had been achieved.

We challenged to make basis for Si electrodes of electric double layer capacitors (EDLC) used as a power source of micro-sensor nodes. Mcroelectromechanical systems (MEMS) processes were successfully introduced to fabricate micro-structured Si-based electrodes to obtain high surface area which leads to high capacity of EDLCs. Study of fundamental properties revealed that the microstructured electrodes benefit from good wettability to electrolytes, but suffer from electric resistance. We found that this problem can be solved by metal-coating of the electrode surface. Finally we build an EDLC consisting of Au-coated micro-structured Si electrodes. This EDLC showed capacity of 14.3 mF/cm₂, which is about 530 times larger than that of an EDLC consisting of flat Au electrodes.

This paper firstly reports the preparation of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) film on silicon substrate of three-dimensional (3D) inverted pyramid structure (IPS) by spray coating. The effect of different substrate temperatures, spraying times and opening sizes on CNTs sidewall covering properties were investigated. The results show that the CNTs covering ratio of sidewall is much lower than that of flat surface and gradually decrease with depth. 40μm×40μm opening obtained the best sidewall covering by CNTs suspension of 40μg/ml at 120°C after 30min spraying so that the CNTs can reach the bottom of IPS and cover about 68.9% sidewall area. At last, it is demonstrated that the output power of the CNTs film-Si solar cell can be enhanced 5.7 times by this method compared to that of the plane structure.

In this report, we investigated conditions to deposit stoichiometric aluminium nitride (AlN) thin films grown on (100)-oriented Si substrates under various Ar/N₂ gas flow rates at a wide range of temperature from room temperature (RT) to 350°C using electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) reactive sputtering. This study revealed that stoichiometric of thin film can be controlled by N₂/Ar flow rate and that stoichiometric N/Al = 1 was archived at N₂/Ar = 2. This study also revealed that crystallinity can be controlled by substrate temperature. From RT to 200°C, thin films were amorphous or poly-crystal, at 350°C however, thin film was mainly [110] and [100] AlN. Obtained thin films are densely packed and have very low root mean square (RMS) roughness of 0.41 nm which is much less than other sputtering methods.

This paper reports on a biofuel cell with a dimension of 13×24 mm² fabricated on a flexible polyimide substrate. I its porous carbon-coated platinum (Pt) electrodes of 3 mm in width and 10 mm in length were fabricated using photolithography and screen printing techniques. Porous carbon was deposited by screen printing of carbon black ink on the Pt electrode surfaces in order to increase the effective electrode surface area and to absorb more enzymes on the electrode surfaces. It utilizes a solidified ascorbic acid (AA) aqueous solution in an agarose hydrogel to increase the portability. The maximum power and power density for the biofuel cell with the fuel unit containing 100 mM AA were 0.063 μW and 0.21 μW/cm² at 0.019 V, respectively.

In this work we present the design, fabrication and prototype testing of Chip Integrated Micro PEM Fuel Cell Accumulator (CIμ-PFCA) combined On-Board Range Extender (O-BRE). CIμ-PFCA is silicon based micro-PEM fuel cell system with an integrated hydrogen storage feature (palladium metal hydride), the run time of CIμ-PFCA is dependent on the stored hydrogen, and in order to extend its run time an O-BRE is realized (catalytic hydrolysis of chemical hydride, NaBH₄. Combining the CIμ-PFCA and O-BRE on a system level have few important design requirements to be considered; hydrogen regulation, gas -liquid separator between the CIμ-PFCA and the O-RE. The usage of traditional techniques to regulate hydrogen (tubes), gas-liquid phase membranes (porous membrane separators) are less desirable in the micro domain, due to its space constraint. Our approach is to use a passive hydrogen regulation and gas-liquid phase separation concept; to use palladium membrane. Palladium regulates hydrogen by concentration diffusion, and its property to selectively adsorb only hydrogen is used as a passive gas-liquid phase separator. Proof of concept is shown by realizing a prototype system. The system is an assembly of CIμ-PFCA, palladium membrane and the O-BRE. The CIμ-PFCA consist of 2 individually processed silicon chips, copper supported palladium membrane realized by electroplating followed by high temperature annealing process under inter atmosphere and the O-BRE is realized out of a polymer substrate by micromilling process with platinum coated structures, which functions as a catalyst for the hydrolysis of NaBH₄. The functionality of the assembled prototype system is demonstrated by the measuring a unit cell (area 1 mm²) when driven by the catalytic hydrolysis of chemical hydride (NaBH₄ and the prototype system shows run time more than 15 hours.

Small power sources based on micro-SOFC for mobile electronic devices required two conditions, i,e, thermally compatibility and thermally self-sustain, because of high operating temperature over 300 ^oC. Moreover, high energy efficiency was also required. It meant that this system should be designed considering thermal management. In this study, we developed micro-SOFC packages which have three functions, thermal insulation, thermal recovery, and self-heating. Heat conduction analysis based on finite element method, and thermochemical calculation revealed that vacuum thermal insulation was effective for size reduction and gas-liquid heat exchanger could reduce the temperature of outer surface. We fabricated the package with three functions for proof of concept and evaluated. As a result, it was suggested that developed package could satisfy both two requirements with high efficiency.

We measured the thermophysical properties of suspensions of carbon nanotubes in water as a type of nanofluid, and experimentally investigated their heat transfer characteristics in a horizontal, closed rectangular vessel. Using a previously constructed system for high- reliability measurement, we quantitatively determined their thermophysical properties and the temperature dependence of these properties. We also investigated the as yet unexplained mechanism of heat transport in carbon-nanotube nanofluids and their flow properties from a thermal perspective. The results indicated that these nanofluids are non-Newtonian fluids, whose high viscosity impedes convection and leads to a low heat transfer coefficient under natural convection, despite their high thermal conductivity.

This paper presents a simple and efficient interface circuit for electrostatic energy harvesting devices, which uses neither controlled electronic switch nor inductor. A built-in voltage multiplier enables to get bias voltages higher than the circuit output voltage, resulting in an increased power output. This interface circuit was implemented using off-the-shelf components. Its operation was validated from 1V to 14V output voltages. Measured output power ranged from 10nW to 650nW using a capacitor varying between 45pF and 155pF at 15Hz. Measurements showed that it was possible to initiate the energy conversion cycles with start-up voltages as low as 100mV.

This paper presents results of an improved inductive wireless power transfer system for reliable long range powering of sensors with milliwatt-level consumption. An ultra-low power flyback impedance emulator operating in open loop is used to present the optimal load to the receiver's resonant tank. Transmitter power modulation is implemented in order to maintain constant receiver power and to prevent damage to the receiver electronics caused by excessive received voltage. Received power is steady up to 3 m at around 30 mW. The receiver electronics and feedback system consumes 3.1 mW and so with a transmitter input power of 163.3 W the receiver becomes power neutral at 4.75 m. Such an IPT system can provide a reliable alternative to energy harvesters for supplying power concurrently to multiple remote sensors.

This paper proposes a microbe culture technology in an open environment using hydrogel microtubes. Oil production microbes, such as Aurantiochytrium, have been discovered and are currently studied to produce fuels instead of fossil fuels. Scale-up of the culture systems of such microbes is critical for practical applications. The microbe culture in a nutrition-rich open environment, such as lakes and sewage plants, is preferable in terms of scales and cost, however, contamination of other native microbes is often fatal to the target microbes. Hydrogel microtubes that can be manufactured by microfluidic devices can encapsulate the microbes and allow oxygen and nutrition to diffuse through the tube walls while preventing other microbes from intruding inside. Therefore, the microbes can be cultured in any environments and scale-up is also possible. In this paper, we demonstrate that the contamination of microbes was prevented and target microbes were successfully cultured inside the microtube.

Low-cost, compact, and coherent X-rays sources would enable exciting applications such as biomedical imaging of soft tissue and real-time visualisation of molecules at a widespread scale. A promising approach to implement such an X-ray source is based on inverse Compton scattering of a series of nanostructured electron sheets accelerated to relativistic speeds. Photon-triggered field emission arrays can readily produce planar arrays of electron bunches with pC-level sheet charge at high repetition rates using intense laser pulses. In this article, the performance of single-crystal, ultrafast, photon-actuated silicon field emitter arrays is investigated for varying emitter height. Charge vs. incident photon pulse energy characteristics and quantum efficiency of the devices are reported.

This paper shows a design optimization of MEMS (Microelectromechanical Systems) electromagnetic energy harvester by using finite element method (FEM) analysis to obtain a maximum generated power. The electromagnetic energy harvester consists of the sputtered NdFeB magnet film on a high-aspect-ratio corrugated Si structure and a counter Au serpentine coil. The each dimension of the device is optimally designed by using FEM simulation. After the prototyping with MEMS fabrication process, the measurement results of the power generation are 2.65 mV of the induced electromotive force and 7.60 nW of the output power with optimum load resistance of 231 Ω at the vibration condition of 100 Hz, 294 μm_p-p.

The paper presents in vitro contractile myocardial cell pattern on piezoelectric nanofiber mats with applications in energy harvesting. The cell-based energy harvester consists of myocardial cell sheet and a PDMS substrate with a PVDF nanofiber mat on. Experimentally, cultured on specifically distributed nanofiber mats, neonatal rat ventricular cardiomyocytes are characterized with the related morphology and contraction. Previously, we have come up with the concept of energy harvesting from heart beating using piezoelectric material. A bio-hybrid energy harvester combined living cardiomyocytes, PDMS polymer substrate and piezoelectric PVDF film with the electrical output of peak current 87.5nA and peak voltage 92.3mV. However, the thickness of the cardiomyocyte cultured on a two-dimensional substrate is much less than that of the piezoelectric film. The Micro Contact Printing (μCP) method used in cell pattern on the PDMS thin film has tough requirement for the film surface. As such, in this paper we fabricated nanofiber-constructed PDMS thin film to realize cell pattern due to PVDF nanofibers with better piezoelectricity and microstructures of nanofiber mats guiding cell distribution. Living cardiomyocytes patterned on those distributed piezoelectric nanofibers with the result of the same distribution as the nanofiber pattern.

High performance porous Si based supercapacitor electrodes are demonstrated. High power density and stability is provided by ultra-thin TiN coating of the porous Si matrix. The TiN layer is deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD), which provides sufficient conformality to reach the bottom of the high aspect ratio pores. Our porous Si supercapacitor devices exhibit almost ideal double layer capacitor characteristic with electrode volumetric capacitance of 7.3 F/cm³. Several orders of magnitude increase in power and energy density is obtained comparing to uncoated porous silicon electrodes. Good stability of devices is confirmed performing several thousands of charge/discharge cycles.

This paper reports a novel nanocomposite anode for lithium-ion battery, with high initial specific capacity (1200mAh/g) and good capacity retention (850mAh/g remaining after 30 cycles). Sufficient silicon nanoparticles (SiNPs) at anode make a significant contribution to specific capacity increase. Moreover, nano void space between SiNPs and carbon scaffold provide enough space for expansion and contraction of SiNPs during the process of lithium ion intercalation and deintercalation to ensure a long cycle life. The porous carbon scaffold is obtained from Si/SiO₂-templated SU-8 photoresist. As such, this design and fabrication makes it possible to implement direct prototyping of three dimensional (3D) micro-battery on chip.

The demonstration of large stroke, high energy density and high power density torsional springs based on carbon nanotube (CNT) yarns is reported, as well as their application as an energy-storing actuator for regenerative braking systems. Originally untwisted CNT yarn is cyclically loaded and unloaded in torsion, with the maximum rotation angle increasing until failure. The maximum extractable energy density is measured to be as high as 6.13 kJ/kg. The tests also reveal structural reorganization and hysteresis in the torsional loading curves. A regenerative braking system is built to capture the kinetic energy of a wheel and store it as elastic energy in twisted CNT yarns. When the yam's twist is released, the stored energy reaccelerates the wheel. The measured energy and mean power densities of the CNT yarns in the simple regenerative braking system are up to 4.69 kJ/kg and 1.21 kW/kg, respectively. A slightly lower energy density of up to 1.23 kJ/kg and a 0.29 kW/kg mean power density are measured for the CNT yarns in a more complex system that mimics a unidirectional rotating regenerative braking mechanism. The lower energy densities for CNT yarns in the regenerative braking systems as compared with the yarns themselves reflect the frictional losses of the regenerative systems.

Manufacture and performance of a composite carbon-based supercapacitor that employs a gel polymer ionic liquid electrolyte to achieve stable, long cycle life, high-current draw energy storage is discussed in this paper. This supercapacitor when cycled galvanostatically can achieve a discharge capacitance of 43.0 mF per square centimeter of substrate by leveraging the strengths of a composite electrode composition. The printed manufacturing process takes place in ambient conditions at room temperature enabling high-current, rechargeable energy storage to be built onto many substrates. Single-cell discharge power densities have reached 404 μW/cm² which could enable many technologies when paired with a MEMS energy harvester.

We have been developing small power generation device of capacitance-type to be converted to electrical energy vibration energy using an electret. In this Study, dielectric nanoparticles were mixed with an electret made of fluorocarbon polymer. As a result, implanted charge density of the electret was successfully enhanced thanks to the mixing of particles. A small sized vibration energy harvester (VEH) was fabricated using the fluorocarbon mixed with dielectric nano-particles. As a result of applying vibration (20 Hz, 0.65 G) to the fabricated VEH, The maximum generated power of approximately 50 μW was obtained.

A novel MEMS electret vibration energy harvester sealed in a package before charging is developed, which should improve the package reliability and long-term stability of the charges. With an early prototype in package, vertical electret on the comb drives has been successfully charged with soft X-ray photoionization, and up to 3.58 μW has been obtained at 570 Hz and 2.2 g oscillation, which corresponds to the effectiveness as high as 42%.

This paper presents a novel out-of-plane electret-based vibrational power generator (EVPG) that has both negative and positive charged electret plates integrated into a single seismic mass system. Compared with the conventional single-charged two-plate configuration, the proposed device not only exhibits an enhanced output voltage magnitude but also has a wide operational bandwidth due to spring softening nonlinearity according to the experimental analysis. With the acceleration changes from 0.1g to 0.5g, the operating 3-dB bandwidth can be increased 2.6 times from 2.5 Hz to 6.5 Hz, which indicates higher energy conversion efficiency than a linear energy harvester in the practical scenario of broadband random vibrations.

In this study, the improvement of energy harvesting from wideband vibration with random change by using a combination of linear and nonlinear spring system is investigated. The system consists of curved beam spring for non-linear buckling, which supports the linear mass-spring resonator. Applying shock acceleration generates a snap through action to the buckling spring. From the FEM analysis, we showed that the snap through acceleration from the buckling action has no relationship with the applied shock amplitude and duration. We use this uniform acceleration as an impulse shock source for the linear resonator. It is easy to obtain the maximum shock response from the uniform snap through acceleration by using a shock response spectrum (SRS) analysis method. At first we investigated the relationship between the snap-through behaviour and an initial curved deflection. Then a time response result for non-linear springs with snap through and minimum force that makes a buckling behaviour were obtained by FEM analysis. By obtaining the optimum SRS frequency for linear resonator, we decided its resonant frequency with the MATLAB simulator.

This paper reports an infrared-to-visible transducer array made of temperature sensitive paint (TSP) for low-cost thermal imaging application. A novel fabrication process using a photo-patternable temperature sensitive paint (PTSP) combined with an SU-8 transfer method was developed. The developped process is simpler than before, and prevents the TSP structure from plasma-induced damage and sticking across a sacrificially-etched gap. The selfsuspended structure as small as 100 pm was successfully fabricated with a large gap of 40 μm from the substrate. The heated object of 300°C was detected with a resolution of about 0.4 mm.

This paper reports the design, fabrication and analysis of a plant-inspired, MEMS- based superheated loop heat pipe (SHLHP) that would exploit nanoporous membranes to allow for operation with large capillary pressures and superheated liquid. The operating principles of SHLHPs differ from conventional designs in 1) the un-coupling of the working fluid from its saturation curve to eliminate limitations associated with temperature head and sub-cooling conditions and 2) the possibility of maintaining sub-saturation throughout the device to eliminate film condensation and improve the condenser thermal conductivity. Nanoporous silicon membranes integrated with DRIE channels are fabricated and characterized. The ability of the membrane to hold liquid under tension is tested by equilibrating water-filled device with various relative humidity and observing the cavitation events within individual voids underneath the membrane. Silicon membranes with desired functionality are further incorporated with patterned glass substrates to form prototype MEMS-based SHLHPs.

We investigate how the wetting state of microstructured SHPo surfaces influences water harvesting performance via dewing by testing two different patterns including posts and grates with varying structural parameters. On grates, the observed Cassie wetting state during condensation is well described by the thermodynamic energy criteria, and small condensates can be efficiently detached from the surfaces due to the small contact line pinning force of Cassie droplets. Meanwhile, on posts, the observed wetting state is dominantly the Wenzel state regardless of the thermodynamic energy of each state, and the condensates are shed only after they grow to a sufficiently large size to overcome much larger pinning force of the Wenzel state. Based on mechanical force balance model and energy barrier consideration, we attribute the difference in the droplet shedding characteristics to the different dynamic pathway from the Wenzel state to the Cassie state between posts and grates. Overall, the faster droplet shedding helps enhance the water harvesting performance of the SHPo surfaces by facilitating the condensation on the droplet-free area, as evidenced by the best water harvesting performance of grates on the Cassie state amongst the tested surfaces.

We report a micro heat exchanger microfabricated from a bulk aluminium alloy substrate. The device is comprised of two 18 cm long microchannels, one on each side of an aluminium chip, capped on both sides with a thin self-adhesive polymer film. In spite of a cheap and facile fabrication method, initial experiments with the device show promising results. Area densities from 25000 m⁻¹ to 45000 m⁻¹ have been achieved. Compared to our previous work on aluminium microfluidic devices produced with a similar technology but from a different, less pure alloy, in this study the etched surfaces are significantly smoother, and present less photoresist delamination.

Various deteriorations are detected in public infrastructures, such as bridges, viaducts, piers and tunnels and caused fatal accidents in some cases. The possibility of the applications of health monitoring by using sensors is the issues of this lecture. The inspection and diagnosis are essential in the maintenance works which include appropriate rehabilitations and replacements. The introduction of monitoring system may improve accuracy and efficiency of inspection and diagnosis. This seems to be innovation of maintenance, old structures may change smart structures by the installation of nerve network and brain, specifically. Cost- benefit viewpoint is also important point, because of public infrastructures.

The modes of deterioration are fatigue, corrosion, and delayed fracture in steel, and carbonization and alkali aggregate reaction in concrete. These are like adult disease in human bodies. The developments of Infrastructures in Japan were concentrated in the 1960th and 1970th. These ages are approaching 50 and deterioration due to aging has been progress gradually. The attacks of earthquakes are also a major issue. Actually, these infrastructures have been supporting economic and social activities in Japan and the deterioration of public infrastructure has become social problems. How to secure the same level of safety and security for all public infrastructures is the challenge we face now.

The targets of monitoring are external disturbances such as traffic loads, earthquakes, winds, temperature, responses against external disturbances, and the changes of performances. In the monitoring of infrastructures, 3W1H(WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and HOW) are essential, that is what kind of data are necessary, where sensors place, when data are collected, and how to collect and process data. The required performances of sensors are accuracy, stability for long time. In the case of long term monitoring, the durability of systems needs more than five years, because the interval of regular bridge inspection works are five years. The supply of powers sometimes becomes serious problem. Some case studies will be presented here.

Current commercial wireless tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) require a battery as electrical power source. The battery limits the lifetime of the TPMS. This limit can be circumvented by replacing the battery by a vibration energy harvester. Autonomous wireless TPMS powered by MEMS electret based vibration energy harvester have been demonstrated. A remaining technical challenge to attain the grade of commercial product with these autonomous TPMS is the mechanical reliability of the MEMS harvester. It should survive the harsh conditions imposed by the tire environment, particularly in terms of mechanical shocks. As shown in this article, our first generation of harvesters has a shock resilience of 400 g, which is far from being sufficient for the targeted application. In order to improve this aspect, several types of shock absorbing structures are investigated. With the best proposed solution, the shock resilience of the harvesters is brought above 2500 g.

Flexible energy harvesters are desired in biomedical applications since human motion is often complicated and aperiodic. However, most demonstrated flexible energy harvesters employ piezoelectric materials which are not biocompatible. Therefore we propose a PDMS-based flexible energy harvester with Parylene-C electret suitable for biomedical applications. To address the reliability issues of sputtered metal electrodes, we use copper mesh electrodes to improve the reliability. The proposed flexible harvester was fabricated and characterized. The measured power of the proposed harvester was 3.33 pW in the compression tests at 20 Hz and 8.5 nW in the finger bending tests at 2 Hz.

Development of power supply package for electret vibration generator. To use the electret vibration generator widely in the market the power supply unit of the package where the circuit of making to direct current had been integrated with the control circuit was developed. And the application was examined.

We had reported the power output enhancement of an electret harvester and the operation of wireless sensor modules only on electricity from our electret harvester^[1]. Since vibration is random and irregular in actual fields, there is the issue that power output of vibration harvesters can't be obtained outside the range of frequencies designed to resonate the inner mass. As a way to solve, we fabricated four electret harvesters tuned to different resonant frequencies only by assembling different springs and weights, and developed voltage conversion circuits with 73% efficiency from 70V AC to 3.6V DC. We demonstrated to obtain stable DC power output at a broad range of frequencies from 27.6Hz to 30.6Hz by combining the four electret harvesters and voltage conversion circuits.

This paper presents combustion and ignition characteristic of H₂/O₂/N₂ flames in a micro flow reactor with a controlled temperature profile. OH-LIF measurement was conducted to capture flame images. Flame responses were investigated for variable inlet flow velocity, U, and equivalence ratio, ϕ. Three kinds of flame responses were experimentally observed for the inlet flow velocities: stable flat flames (normal flames) in the high inlet flow velocity regime; unstable flames called Flames with Repetitive Extinction and Ignition (FREI) in the intermediate flow velocity regime; and stable weak flames in the low flow velocity regime, at ϕ = 0.6, 1.0 and 1.2. On the other hand, weak flame was not observed at ϕ = 3.0 by OH-LIF measurement. Computational OH mole fractions showed lower level at the rich conditions than those at stoichiometric and lean conditions. To examine this response of OH signal to equivalence ratio, rate of production analysis was conducted and four kinds of major contributed reaction for OH production: R3(O + H₂ <=> H + OH); R38(H + O2 <=> O + OH); R46(H + HO₂ <=> 2OH); and R86(2OH <=> O + H₂O), were found. Three reactions among them, R3, R38 and R46, did not showed significant difference in rate of OH production for different equivalence ratios. On the other hand, rate of OH production from R86 at ϕ = 3.0 was extremely lower than those at ϕ = 0.6 and 1.0. Therefore, R86 was considered to be a key reaction for the reduction of the OH production at ϕ = 3.0.

The advancement of microscale combustion has been limited by quenching effects as flames cease to be much smaller than combustors. The long studied sensitivity of flames to electrical effects may provide means to overcome this issue. Here we experimentally and numerically investigate the potential of electric field effects to enhance combustion. The results demonstrate that, under specific conditions, externally electric fields will sustain combustion in structures smaller than the quenching distance. The analysis proposes a reduced mechanism to model this result and provides a study of the governing parameters. We find good qualitative agreement between the model and experiments. Specifically, the model is found to successfully capture the capacity to increase and decrease flame speed according to electric field magnitude and direction. Further, in both experiments and computations the sensitivity to electrical enhancement increases for more energetic mixtures. We do find that the model underpredicts the maximum achievable speed enhancement observed, suggesting that additional phenomena should be included to expand the range of conditions that can be studied.

A MEMS wireless wall temperature sensor for combustion studies is proposed. Electrical resistance change in a LCR circuit is used to measure the temperature through inductive coupling the sensor coil and the read-out coil. Equivalent circuit model and 3-D electromagnetic simulation are employed to design sensor configuration. The resonant frequency is increased with increasing the resistance due to the temperature increase. The prototype sensor was successfully fabricated with MEMS technologies. The impedance phase angle shows a sharp dip at the resonant frequency, which is in good accordance with the equivalent circuit model. The measured temperature sensitivity is found to be as high as 6 kHz/K, when the distance between the read-out and the sensor coils is 0.71 mm.

A miniature combustor for converting organic samples into CO₂ with application in carbon isotopic measurements has been manufactured and evaluated. The combustor was made of High-Temperature Co-fired Ceramic (HTCC) alumina green tapes. The device has a built-in screen printed heater and a temperature sensor made of platinum, co-sintered with the ceramic. A copper oxide oxygen supply was added to the combustor after sintering by in-situ electroplating of copper on the heater pattern followed by thermal oxidation. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) and Thermal Gravimetric Analysis (TGA) were used to study electroplating, oxidation and the oxide reduction processes. The temperature sensor was calibrated by use of a thermocouple. It demonstrates a temperature coefficient resistance of 4.66×10⁻³/°C between 32 and 660 °C. The heat characterization was done up to 1000 °C by using IR thermography, and the results were compared with the data from the temperature sensor. Combustion of starch confirmed the feasibility of using copper oxide as the source of oxygen of combustion.

This paper studies the interaction between two identical micro-slot diffusion flames. Here, we define a micro-slot flame as a slot flame of which the slot width is less than about 1 mm. Because of its smallness, a micro-slot flame has a high heating density and can be used as a small heat source. However, the heat release rate of a single micro-slot flame is limited, and therefore, multiple micro-slot flames may be used to increase total heat release rate. As a first step, this paper considers a situation in which two micro-slot flames are used with certain burner spacing. When two diffusion flames are placed closely, flame shape changes from that of an isolated flame. Studying such flame shape change and resultant change in total heat release rate is the topic of this paper. Experiment is conducted and total heat release rate is measured by integrating CH* chemiluminescence recorded using a CCD camera and an optical filter of the wavelength of 430 nm. Two different burner materials, copper and glass, are tested to study the effect of heat loss to burners. An analytical model is applied to predict flame shape. In addition to the classical Burke-Schumann assumptions, two slot flames are modeled as line sources with zero width, enabling a simple analytical solution for the critical burner spacing at which two flames touch each other. The critical burner spacing is a key parameter that characterizes the interaction between two micro-slot flames. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are then conducted to test the validity of the present theory. CFD results are favorably compared with the theoretical prediction.

A surface reaction kinetic model for the combustion of methanol/air mixture was developed in order to investigate the ignition inhibitory mechanism of wall on the premixed gas in a micro closed volume. In this model, except for H, O, OH and CH₃ radicals, the absorption of hydrogen peroxide and hydroperoxyl on the surface were also considered. By applying CHEMKIN-Pro software, the model was integrated into the calculation of homogeneous combustion process of gas mixture. Surface reactions were found resulting in the increase of ignition delay time. The sensitivity analysis showed that the loss of hydrogen peroxide on the wall was the main reason, due to the direct suppression effect on the generation and accumulation of OH in the radical pool. However, the loss of hydroperoxyl would take the place of hydrogen peroxide as the main inhibitory factor when the sticking coefficient became as large as the order of 10⁻³. In addition, the ignition delay time increased with sticking coefficient or surface-area-to-volume ratio. Enhancing the initial temperature of premixed gas was able to reduce the inhibitory effect of surface reactions.

In this work, to increase magnetic flux passing through the electric coil in a bistable vibration energy harvester, the magnetic circuit is made closed by introducing two coil systems which have magnetic core in their axis holes. The magnetic resistance of the magnetic circuit, composed of silicon steel and thin air gaps, is supressed to be small. The double well potential is realized from the spring force and nonlinear magnetic force between the magnets and the magnetic core. Two harvesters with opened and closed magnetic circuits are manufactured for comparison. It is also shown that the closed magnetic circuit can effectively improve the output power.

All Louver was typically representative as the thermal control device. The louver was not suitable to be applied to small satellite, because it has the disadvantage of increase in weight and volume. So MEMS-based variable radiator was developed to support the disadvantage of the louver MEMS-based variable emissivity radiator was designed for satellite thermal control. Because of its immediate response and low power consumption. Also MEMS- based variable emissivity radiator has been made smaller by using MEMS process, it could be solved the problem of the increase in weight and volume, and it has a high reliability and immediate response by using electrical control. In this study, operation validation of the MEMS radiator had been carried out, resulting that emissivity could be controlled. Numerical model was also designed to predict the thermal control performance of MEMS-based variable emissivity radiator.

This paper reports an improvement in dielectric and piezoelectric properties of screen-printed PZT/polymer films for flexible electronics applications using Cold Isostatic Pressing (CIP). The investigation involved half and fully cured PZT/polymer composite pastes with weight ratio of 12:1 to investigate the effect of the CIP process on the piezoelectric and dielectric properties. It was observed that the highest dielectric and piezoelectric properties are achieved at pressures of 5 and 10 MPa for half and fully cured films respectively. The relative dielectric constants were 300 and 245 measured at 1 kHz for the half and fully cured samples. Using unoptimised poling conditions, the initial d33 values were 30 and 35 pC/N for the half and fully cured films, respectively. The fully cured sample was then poled using optimized conditions and demonstrated a d₃₃ of approximately 44 pC/N which is an increase of 7% compared with non-CIP processed materials.

In this paper we present the measurement of temperature differences between the ambient air and the body temperature of a sheep (Heidschnucke) and its applicability for thermoelectric energy harvesting from livestock, demonstrated via the test of a specially tailored TEG system in a real-life experiment. In three measurement campaigns average temperature differences were found between 2.5 K and 3.5 K. Analytical models and FEM simulations were carried out to determine the actual thermal resistance of the sheep's fur from comparisons with the temperature measurements. With these data a thermoelectric (TEG) generator was built in a thermally optimized housing with adapted heats sink. The whole TEG system was mounted to a collar, including a data logger for recording temperature and TEG voltage. First measurements at the neck of a sheep were accomplished, with a calculated maximal average power output of 173 μW at the TEG. Taking the necessity of a low-voltage step-up converter into account, an electric output power of 54 μW is available which comes close to the power consumption of a low-power VHF tracking system.

A novel high temperature thermoelectric module with thermoelectric materials never before combined in a module is currently researched. The module placement in the cooling channels of a jet engine where the cold side will be cooled by high flow cooling air (550° C) and the hot side will be at the wall (800° C). The aim of the project is to drastically reduce the length of the wires by replacing wired sensors with wireless sensors and power these (3-10mW) with thermoelectric harvesters. To optimize the design for the temperature range and the environment an analytic model was constructed. Using known models for this purpose was not possible for this project, as many of the models have too many assumptions, e.g. that the temperature gradient is relatively low, that thick electrodes with very low resistance can be used, that the heat transfer through the base plates are perfect or that the aim of the design is to maximize the efficiency. The analytical model in this paper is a combination of several known models with the aim to examine what materials to use in this specific environment to achieve the highest possible specific power (mW/g).

In the realm of MEMS piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters, cantilever-based designs are by far the most popular. Despite being deceptively simple, the active piezoelectric area near the clamped end is able to accumulate maximum strain-generated-electrical-charge, while the free end is able to accommodate a proof mass without compromising the effective area of the piezoelectric generator since it experiences minimal strain anyway. While other contending designs do exist, this paper investigates five micro-cantilever (MC) topologies, namely: a plain MC, a tapered MC, a lined MC, a holed MC and a coupled MC, in order to assess their relative performance as an energy harvester. Although a classical straight and plain MC offers the largest active piezoelectric area, alternative MC designs can potentially offer higher average mechanical strain distribution for a given mechanical loading. Numerical simulation and experimental comparison of these 5 MCs (0.5 μ AlN on 10 μm Si) with the same practical dimensions of 500 μm and 2000 μm, suggest a cantilever with a coupled subsidiary cantilever yield the best power performance, closely followed by the classical plain topology.

This paper presents the first realizations of a novel concept for thermal energy harvesting at micro scale. The devices proposed here are based on a two-step transduction combining thermo-mechanical and piezoelectric conversion. In this contribution, we present for the first time results on micro fabricated structures with integrated piezoelectric layers, focusing mainly on the characterization of the piezoelectric material. The process flow to get a bilayered bistable structure is briefly described, highlighting the way how to control the initial deflection. The characterization of the piezoelectric thin film is presented then. The e_31,f coefficient is measured in both sensor and actuator mode and is found to be equal to -0,91 C.m⁻² in both configurations. This value, close to the state-of-the-art, is very promising for the future thermal harvesting applications. Finally the buckling of a structure actuated by a voltage was observed and the corresponding displacement measured by laser interferometry.

A low resonance frequency piezoelectric energy harvesting using a hybrid fluid diaphragm (HFD) is presented. This paper describes the design, fabrication and measurement of such device for harvesting energy from environmental vibrations. The HFD consists in an incompressible fluid confined between two thin piezoelectric membranes. The output voltage and power of the PVDF HFD are studied based on experimental and simulation results. Compared with conventional vibration harvester, this proposed solution is very simple and suitable for miniaturization and integration.

Wind energy harvesters based on fluttering offer a valuable and efficient alternative to the traditional wind turbines. A longer life expectancy and cheaper fabrication is attained through the absence of gears or bearings. This article presents the theoretical and experimental study of a novel windbelt-based energy harvester, designed to harvest from continuously changing low-speed winds. A theoretical model is derived to explore the scaling effect on the critical flutter frequency, and experimental results validate the theoretical predictions.

Energy harvesting from human motion addresses the growing need for battery-free health and wellness sensors in wearable applications. The major obstacles to harvesting energy in such applications are low and random frequencies due to the nature of human motion. This paper presents a generalized rotational harvester model in 3 dimensions to determine the upper bound of power output from real world measured data. Simulation results indicate much space for improvement on power generation comparing to existing devices. We have developed a rotational energy harvester for human motion that attempts to close the gap between theoretical possibility and demonstrated devices. Like previous work, it makes use of magnetically plucked piezoelectric beams. However, it more fully utilizes the space available and has many degrees of freedom available for optimization. Finally we present a prototype harvester based on the coupled harvester model with preliminary experimental validation.

This paper deals with an electrical modelling and optimization of a thermal energy harvester dedicated to power autonomous systems. Such devices based on bimetal strips and piezoceramics turn thermal gradients into electricity by a two-step conversion mechanism. This work focuses first on a demonstration of a ST-WSN (GreenNet demonstration platform) supplied by the harvester to validate, for the first time, the harvesters viability. That demonstration focuses attention on the need for an optimized power management circuit for piezoelectric generators able to reach output voltages up to 20 V. The work deals then with the proposal of an equivalent lumped element model of the piezoelectric transducer with its SPICE implementation to enable the optimization of a dedicated power management circuit based on the Pulsed Synchronous Charge Extractor (PSCE). Simulations using the SPICE model and the power management circuit lead to an increased extracted power by 144%.

This paper presents an evaluation of an electrostatic vibration energy harvester with the bipolar charged electret. The energy harvester with the size of 13 × 12 × 1.2 mm³ was fabricated. The output power of the bipolar charged with ±250 V harvester was 9 μW when the acceleration was 1.4 g at 352 Hz with 0.9 MΩ load resistance. The effectiveness against the velocity-damped resonant-generator (VDRG) limit was 2.5%. The electrostatic forces of the actual device with DC bias, which simulates charged electret with monopolar and bipolar were experimentally and numerically verified. We estimated the electrostatic force by measuring the vibration amplitude versus applied acceleration of the electret mass. As a result, we investigated the bipolar charged device can reduce the effect of electrostatic force as low as no bias condition. The numerical model of the energy harvester considering the electrostatic force by FEM static analysis was also established. The comparison between the numerical model and the measurement results showed a similar inclination.

We present a low frequency vibration driven 2-DOF piezoelectric energy harvester with increased performance, in terms of both bandwidth and output power, by mechanical impact. It consists of two series spring-mass systems (positioned in a parallel manner) one of which responds to low frequency vibration, engages with the harvester base stopper periodically by piecewise linear impact, and transfers a secondary shock to the second spring- mass system comprising of power generating element. It introduces a non-linear frequency up- conversion mechanism which, in turn, generates increased output power within a wide range of applied frequency. A 2-DOF prototype harvester without stopper shows two narrow resonant peaks and delivers maximum 2.11μW peak power to its matched load resistance at 17Hz frequency and 0.5g acceleration. On the other hand, it offers a -3dB bandwidth of 15Hz (9Hz- 24Hz) and delivers maximum 202.4μW peak power to its matched load resistance at the same operating condition when a stopper is placed below the primary mass at 0.5mm distance. Generated power increases up to 449μW as the acceleration increases to 1g.

This paper presents an equivalent circuit model of an impact-based piezoelectric energy harvester. The harvester alternately generates two different shapes of damped- oscillating signals due to the asymmetric structure of the device. Those signals have strong high frequency components through mechanical impact from low frequency vibration. Equivalent circuit model with dual voltage source is proposed to precisely describe the behaviour of the harvester. The simulation results of the harvester with typical conversion circuits were compared with measurement data to verify the correctness of proposed model.

This paper presents a non-contact method of harvesting energy from an aircraft power line that has an AC current of variable amplitude and a frequency range of 360-800 Hz. The current and frequency characteristics of the aircraft power line are dependent on the rotation speed of the electrical generators and will therefore change during a flight. The harvester consists of an inductive coil with a ferrite core, which is interfaced to a rectifier, step-down regulator and supercapacitor. A prototype system was constructed to demonstrate reliable output voltage regulation across a supercapacitor that will supply a peak power of 100 mW under duty cycled load conditions. The system could fully charge a 40 mF supercapacitor to 3.3 V in 78 s from a power line current of 1.5 A_rms at 650 Hz.

This paper describes the reliability of piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters (PVEHs) of Pb(Zr,Ti)O₃ (PZT) thin films on metal foil cantilevers. The PZT thin films were directly deposited onto the Pt-coated stainless-steel (SS430) cantilevers by rf-magnetron sputtering, and we observed their aging behavior of power generation characteristics under the resonance vibration condition for three days. During the aging measurement, there was neither fatigue failure nor degradation of dielectric properties in our PVEHs (length: 13 mm, width: 5.0 mm, thickness: 104 μm) even under a large excitation acceleration of 25 m/s². However, we observed clear degradation of the generated electric voltage depending on excitation acceleration. The decay rate of the output voltage was 5% from the start of the measurement at 25 m/s². The transverse piezoelectric coefficient (e_31,f) also degraded with almost the same decay rate as that of the output voltage; this indicates that the degradation of output voltage was mainly caused by that of piezoelectric properties. From the decay curves, the output powers are estimated to degrade 7% at 15 m/s² and 36% at 25 m/s² if we continue to excite the PVEHs for 30 years.

Recently the use of nonlinear bi-stable micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS) to achieve automobile tire vibration power generation has made some progress. However, the theory of stochastic resonance has not been successfully applied to automobile tires, which can produce a larger vibrational response than for a typical resonance while inputting a weak periodic force and noise excitation into a nonlinear bi-stable system. Hence, in this paper, in view of the principle of stochastic resonance, a new model is derived by positioning a magnetic end mass attached to a cantilever beam and another permanent magnet with the same polarity on the frame. Due to the road noise excitation along with the periodic force inputted to the mechanism, whether the phenomenon of stochastic resonance can happen will be discussed. Meanwhile, on the basis of Kramers rate and duffing equations the preliminary experimental device is also designed.

A new piezoelectric energy harvester design is proposed in order to achieve a wider bandwidth without compromising energy conversion efficiency. By coupling two cantilevers where the tip of the bottom one is attached to the base of the upper one, the simulated harvester will have a wider bandwidth and higher power output compared with two simulated single tuned single cantilevers. This is a compact design, using only half the area compared to two parallel single cantilevers at the price of a small increase in height. The measured coupled harvester has approximately 1.7 times higher energy output than the combination of two measured tuned single cantilevers achieved by a coupling with less mechanical damping. With an improved coupling the power output is increased to 2.3 times higher than two single tuned cantilevers.

This paper reports on a new tuning concept, which enables the operation of a vibration generator for energy autonomous condition monitoring of maritime gearboxes. The tuning concept incorporates a circular tuning magnet, which interacts with a coupling magnet attached to the active transducer element. The tuning range can be tailored to the application by careful design of the gap between tuning magnet and coupling magnet. A total rotation angle of only 180° is required for the tuning magnet in order to obtain the full frequency bandwidth. The tuning concept is successfully demonstrated by charging a 0.6 F capacitor on the basis of physical vibration profiles taken from a gearbox.

In this study, we focused on lead zirconate titanate (PZT) as a power generating piezoelectric element. Niobium was added to each of the PZT elements to improve their power generation characteristics. The purpose of the study was to develop a high-efficiency PZT generator element that utilizes the vibration loads in the support members of a structure. We have previously reported the power generation characteristics of laminated PZT elements under vibration loads. Effect of vibration load, vibration frequency and number of PZT layers on generation characteristics of PZT elements was evaluated in the vibration test. We evaluate the power generation of laminated PZT elements and present the results of an experiment using a switching circuit as a load circuit in order to confirm the suitability of the laminated PZT element as a power source.

Environmental vibrations include random oscillations of different frequencies and amplitudes. Energy harvesters recover the energy associated with these vibrations. Properties of the vibrations and output power are characterized for cantilever-type piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters using (100)-orientated BiFeO₃ films subject to both ideal and random oscillations. The displacement and output power under random oscillations were smaller than those under ideal oscillations. This decrease originates with the decreasing acceleration of the fundamental wave with the spurious component having little influence on the resonance response.

This paper reports on an attempt to improve the charge carrier life time in electret layers made of Parylene-C by implementing a patterned drift barrier close to the surface. Using various, differently structured metals and inorganic materials as a drift barrier, the initial surface potential directly after charging was increased by about 11.5% compared to electret layers made of pure Parylene-C. Furthermore, a higher charging efficiency was achieved. The charge carrier distribution has a higher homogeneity and the usually observed surface potential reduction at the rim of the electret layer was less pronounced. Against expectations, the long-term stability did not improve among the chosen materials and patterns. Regarding side effects observed with unstructured drift barriers, the electret layers with a structured drift barrier do not suffer from the horizontal discharging.

In this paper, we design and fabricate a NanoFinger Plasmonic Structure (NFPS) utilized in water splitting for hydrogrn production by visible light irradiation. This structure can generate numerous hot electrons from localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) during visible light irradiation. Through this hot electrons transferred via titanium dioxide to platinum nanoparticles, hydrogen ions in water can be efficiently reducing into hydrogen, while hot holes left in gold oxidizing into oxygen. Experimental results demonstrated the photoelectrochemical signal can be enhanced by 1.96~2.09-fold in on-off test under visible light, indicating the possibility for high efficient hydrogen generation.

This paper reports the ANSYS simulation and fabrication processes for optimising PDMS ferroelectret performance. The proposed model extends the previously published analytical models and compares this with simulation of individual void geometry. The ferroelectret material is fabricated from PDMS using 3D-printed plastic moulds. The analytical model and Ansys simulation results predict the variation in performance of the PDMS ferroelectret with the different void geometry and surface charge density. The theoretical maximum piezoelectric coefficient d33 achieved was about 220 pC/N. The experimental maximum d33 obtained was 172 pC/N.

The final goal of this study is to develop all-Ge-based energy harvesting modules consisting of mechanical generators, rectifiers, capacitors and power managing digital circuits. To make basis for the development of modules, we focused on development of the Ge electrodes for electric double layer capacitors (EDLC). Firstly, to establish a method to make high surface area Ge electrodes, we studied surface etching of the Ge(100) substrates in the acid solution. We found that the substrates with higher dopant concentration forms smaller size micro-pores with higher area density that leads to higher surface area. Secondly we studied stability of Ge in the ionic liquid (IL) electrolyte by ac impedance measurements. The impedance plots verified that Ge is reactive in IL electrolyte, thus not appropriate for electrodes without surface modification. Finally we oxidized Ge surface and tested the stability again. The impedance plot of the surface- oxidized Ge showed little reaction, proving that we succeeded to improve the surface stability.

In this paper, the homemade open-loop reduction system (OLRS), and redox transmetalation method were utilized to produce the core-shell Ru (ruthenium)/Pt (platinum) catalysts on the carbon cloth (CC) for direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) application. By adjusting pH value and heating to proper temperature of the ionized reduction environment, Pt⁴⁺ can be first converted into Pt²⁺ to allow partial Ru replacement with Pt by redox transmetalation and produce Ru@Pt core-shell nanostructures[1]. And we change the reduction temperature to see how it affects the efficiency of the DMFC.

The scanning electron microscopic (SEM) top-view micrographs showing that the apparent Ru@Pt nanoparticles successfully deposited on both the inner and outer surfaces of the hydrophilically-treated CC. At high SEM magnification, the small size and high-density distribution of the Ru@Pt nanoparticles were clearly observed on the hydrophilically-treated CC, and much more Pt@Ru catalyst deposit on the CC surface with the sample of 80 °C. The electrosorption charges of hydrogen ion (Q_H) and the peak current density (I_P) of the samples in the cyclic voltammetry (CV) curves. The magnitude of peak current density is positive correlation to the temperature. However, the CO tolerance, indicated that the better CO tolerance contributed to the less Pt replace on Ru cluster, which allow the Ru oxidizing CO to CO₂ efficiently, is negative correlation-- to the temperature. The sample of 50 °C shows the better combination catalyst efficiency between the CO tolerance and the electrochemical performance.

This paper reports a high efficient phosphoric acid fuel cell by employing a micro/nano composite proton exchange membrane incorporating glass microfiber (GMF) sealed by polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) nano-porous film. This multilayer membrane not only possesses both thermal and chemical stability at phosphoric acid fuel cell working temperature at 150~220°C but also is cost effective. As a result, the inclusion of the high porosity and proton conductivity from glass microfiber and the prevention of phosphoric acid leakage from PTEF nano film can be achieved at the same time.The composite membrane maximum proton conductivity achieves 0.71 S/cm at 150 °C from AC impedance analysis, much higher than common phosphoric acid porous membranes For single cell test, The GMF fuel cell provides a 63.6mW/cm2 power density at 200mA/cm2 current density while GMF plus methanol treated PTFE (GMF+mPTFE) provides 59.2mW/cm2 power density at 160mA/cm2 current density for hydrogen and oxygen supply at 150 °C. When we change the electrodes that are more suited for phosphoric acid fuel cell, the GMF+mPTFE single cell gets higher performance which achieve 296mW/cm2 power density at 900mA/cm2 current density for hydrogen and oxygen supply at 150 °C.

Uniformity of catalyst layer thickness was improved to obtained higher output with our miniature fuel cells. Though the miniature fuel cells demonstrated high power density about 500mW/cm² with 1 mm² reaction area, it was difficult to maintain the power density with larger reaction area and careful observation of the prototypes revealed that the porous Si layer, which should be etched away completely, remained on the channel bottoms. Nonuniform porous Pt catalyst layer thickness was suspicious for the residual porous Si, and rotation of the plating vessel in the Pt deposition process was performed to mitigate variation of the catalyst layer thickness. Though the power density was still low with larger reaction area, the larger output was successfully obtained with the vessel rotation.

We investigated condensate mobility and resulting heat transfer performance on Cu based water repellent surfaces including hydrophobic, superhydrophobic and oil-infused surfaces. We observed the transient microscale condensation behaviours up to 3 hours with controlling the supersaturation level at 1.64. We experimentally characterized the nucleation density, droplet size distribution and growth rate, and then incorporated them into the developed condensation heat transfer model to compare the condensation heat transfer performance of each surface. Due to the spontaneous coalescence induced jumping, superhydrophobic surface can maintain the high heat transfer performance while other surfaces show a gradual decrease in heat transfer performance due to the increase in the thermal resistance across the growing droplets. We also quantified each thermal resistance values from the vapor to the surface through the droplets to find out the relative importance of each thermal resistance term.

This paper reports the new output circuit using a single electrode in electret energy harvester, and proves that the single electrode is able to generate output power on grounded load. 3D numerical model of gap-closing type electret energy harvester is presented, and power generation characteristics are analysed and verified. Results show that the two electrodes are actually two independent current sources. Single electrode output circuit has two merits: when only one electrode is connected, it reduces wiring difficulty; when both electrodes are connected to grounded load respectively, it doubles output power compared with traditional output circuit. Using proposed circuit, maximal total power of 30mm×20mm prototype reaches 154.5μW@10Hz, 1.8mm sinusoidal vibration, and an LED has been successfully lighted up.

This paper proposes a real number extended sliding surface (RNESS) with integral compensation (IC) for the application of DC-AC converters. Classic sliding surface (CSS) is insensitive to system uncertainties, but in sliding action its system dynamics becomes a reduced-order dimension and thus lost the partial system dynamics. For recovering incomplete system response, the RNESS is designed and can retrieve incomplete system response of the CSS. However, steady-state errors still exist in system dynamics of the RNESS and cause high converter voltage harmonics. To overcome steady-state errors, a modified RNESS by the addition of IC is proposed. With the proposed method, the system yields a DC-AC converter with high-quality AC output voltage. Experiments are performed in support of the proposed method.

Energy management is considered a task of strategic importance in contemporary society. It is a common fact that the most successful economies of the planet are the economies that can transform and use large quantities of energy. In this talk we will discuss the role of energy with specific attention to the processes that happens at micro and nanoscale. The description of energy conversion processes at these scales requires approaches that go way beyond the standard equilibrium termodynamics of macroscopic systems. In this talk we will address from a fundamental point of view the physics of the dissipation of energy and will focus our attention to the energy transformation processes that take place in the modern micro and nano information and communication devices.

Nonlinear piezoelectric energy harvesting generators can provide a large bandwidth combined with a good resonant power output. However, the frequency response is characterized by a strong hysteresis making a technical use difficult if the hysteresis cannot be compensated. We propose a tuning mechanism that allows both, a compensation of the hysteresis as well as maintaining the optimal work point. The compensation algorithm can reduce the hysteresis to a minimum of only 1.5 Hz and maintain a high energy oscillation in a large frequency window between 53.3 Hz and 74.5 Hz.

This paper validates lumped models of an asymmetric bistable MEMS electrostatic energy harvester against measurements. A conventional model of constant damping coefficient turns out to be ineffective in predicting or reproducing the device response. This shortcoming is demonstrated by the effective damping coefficient obtained from fits to experimental results being far from constant under varying operating conditions. Therefore, two different nonlinear models of the damping force in polynomial form are introduced and investigated. We find that the experimental results are well reproduced over the entire range of measured acceleration amplitudes by modeling with a phenomenological nonlinear damping force which is a high-order polynomial in the velocity.

This paper reports a novel technique enabling to tune the resonant frequency of linear inertial piezoelectric energy harvesters through the control strategy of the associated electronic interface circuit. When associated with piezoelectric devices exhibiting high electromechanical coupling, it is expected to enable the variation of the resonant frequency in large proportions.

This paper reports the design and test of a miniature coupled bistable vibration energy harvester. Operation of a bistable structure largely depends on vibration amplitude rather than frequency, which makes it very promising for wideband vibration energy harvesting applications. A coupled bistable structure consists of a pair of mobile magnets that create two potential wells and thus the bistable phenomenon. It requires lower excitation to trigger bistable operation compared to conventional bistable structures. Based on previous research, this work focused on miniaturisation of the coupled bistable structure for energy harvesting application. The proposed bistable energy harvester is a combination of a Duffing's nonlinear structure and a linear assisting resonator. Experimental results show that the output spectrum of the miniature coupled bistable vibration energy harvester was the superposition of several spectra. It had a higher maximum output power and a much greater bandwidth compared to simply the Duffing's structure without the assisting resonator.

In this study, a small scale power generation system with a meso-scale vortex combustor has been developed. The system was consisted of a couple of thermo-electric device and a heat medium. The medium was made of duralumin, 40 × 40 × 20 mm and 52 g weight, and the vortex combustion chamber of 7 mm inner diameter was embedded in it. It was found that a stable flame could be established in the narrow 7 mm channel even the mean axial velocity reached 1.2 m/s. And furthermore, the vortex flow significantly enhanced the heat transfer from the burned gas to combustion chamber, and as a result, the medium was heated to 300°C quickly (within 5 minutes) by the combustion of propane / air mixture for 145W input energy. The system could successfully generate 1.98 W (4.3 V and 0.46 A), which corresponded to the energy conversion rate of 0.7 % per unit thermo-electric device.

The self-standing micro cogeneration system by coupling a microcombustor, thermoelectric modules and an air supply device was developed. The microcombustor has a porous monolithic Pt catalyst layer and the combustion efficiency of 90% was attained. A micro-blower was used to supply air to the combustor, and it was driven by a part of the electricity from the Bi-Te TE modules through a DC-DC converter. We investigated the optimal point where the output became maximal and the system stood by itself. At the optimal point, the input fuel enthalpy was 13.2W and the electricity of 403mW was generated from the TE modules. The micro blower used 280mW and the net electricity was 123mW. Therefore the final thermal efficiency was 0.93%. The efficiency was the same magnitude of the world smallest model plane engine TeeDee01 (COX Co. Ltd.) although the thermal input was less than its 1/20.

This paper investigated the effect of cell temperature and product species concentration induced by small-jet flame on the power generation performance of Direct Flame Fuel Cell (DFFC). The cell is placed above the small flame and heated product gas is impinged toward it and this system is the simplest and smallest unit of the power generation device to be developed. Equivalence ratio (ϕ) and the distance between the cell and the burner surface (d) are considered as main experimental parameters. It turns out that open circuit voltage (OCV) increases linearly with the increase of temperature in wide range of equivalence ratios. However, it increases drastically at which the equivalence ratio became small (ϕ ≤ 2.0) showing inner flame clearly. This result suggests that OCV depends on not only cell temperature but also the species concentration exposed to the cell. It is suggested that Nernst equation might work satisfactory to predict OCV of DFFC.

The micro power generator based on clustered diffusion microflames and a direct flame fuel cell (DFFC) is proposed and its energy conversion efficiency is evaluated to investigate the optimum state of combustion. The clustered diffusion microflames are established on the 2.5 mm pitch 3-by-3 array of fuel jets with a diameter of 0.07 mm and a velocity of 24 m/s at the outlet by the interaction with other microflames around. The clustered diffusion microflames is more suitable for micro power generator than microflame array because of suppression of soot formation without air supply system. Although the conversion efficiency of the system with clustered microflames is quite sensitive to the separation distance between the burner and the cell, compared with the microflame array, it has attained the same level of conversion efficiency with microflame array, i.e. 0.45 %. The results of cell temperature suggest that the rapid decrease of conversion efficiency with increasing separation distance is caused by the decrease of species supply such as CO and H₂ rather than the decrease of heat supply. The observation of the secondary flame suggests that the reason of high sensitivity to the separation distance is because the cell position changes the flowrate of entrained ambient air and hence the flame equivalence ratio.

This work presents a small-scale wideband piezomagnetoelastic vibration energy harvester (VEH) aimed for operation at frequencies of a few hundred Hz. The VEH consists of a tape-casted PZT cantilever with thin sheets of iron foil attached on each side of the free tip. The wideband operation is achieved by placing the cantilever in a magnetic field induced by either one or two magnets located oppositely of the cantilever. The attraction force created by the magnetic field and iron foils introduces a mechanical force in opposite direction of the cantilevers restoring force causing a spring softening effect. In linear operation (without magnets) the harvester generates a RMS power of 141 μW/g² at 588 Hz with a relative bandwidth of 3.8% over a 100 kΩ load resistor. When operated with one magnet ideally positioned opposite the cantilever, a RMS power of 265 μW/g² is generated at 270 Hz with a relative bandwidth of 25%.

The dynamic response to white Gaussian noise of a bistable non-linear vibration energy harvester based on the repulsive electrostatic interaction between a microcantilever and an electrode has been theoretically studied. The cantilever-electrode system can be brought from a linear regime characterized by a quadratic potential, when cantilever is far from the electrode, to a non-linear bistable regime characterized by a quartic potential, when both elements are close enough. This distance parameter, which is commonly used to tune bistability, is unusually used here also to inject the energy to the system in the form of displacement noise. Thus, the widening and shifting to the low-frequency region of the response spectrum as well as the enhancement of the rms out-of-plane vibration of the cantilever are both demonstrated through this parametrically-induced bistability.

Real world systems that are candidates for vibrational energy harvesting rarely vibrate at a single frequency, nor are these frequencies constant over time. This necessitates that vibration harvesters operate over a wide bandwidth or tune their resonance. Most tunable devices require additional energy or active control to achieve resonance over various frequencies. This work presents a passively self-tuning energy harvester that autonomously adapts its resonant frequency to the input without requiring additional energy. The system consists of a clamped- clamped beam, a movable proof mass, and a piezoelectric patch bonded to the underside of the beam. It demonstrated an open-circuit voltage output of 668 mVrms at 160Hz, 0.65g input excitation. Discrepancies between displacement and voltage magnification factors upon tuning at higher frequencies are discussed, as well as instabilities of the system and sensitivity to proof mass characteristics.

We propose a fine-grained stainless-steel as a promising material for a robust oscillator and investigate the dependence of frequency band width, resonance frequency, and output power on initial air gaps in electret-based vertical vibration energy harvesters. Beams of the oscillator showed a shallow side-etched depth less than 10 μm, as well as smooth edges. The oscillator succeeded in travelling over 1-mm displacement without fracture. Also, we found that broader frequency band, as well as lower resonance frequency, can be achieved with reducing the initial air gap, whereas the output power exhibited a peak value at an optimal initial air gap. The results may be attributed to the soft spring effect induced by the stronger electrostatic force. Maximum output power density and FWHM of frequency band width of our harvester are 4.7 μW/cm³ and 14 Hz at initial air gap 0.3 mm and acceleration 4.9 m/s².

Power of resonant piezoelectric harvesters can be severely limited if the damping force cannot be dynamically altered as the mechanical excitation level changes. The singlesupply pre-biasing (SSPB) technique enables the Coulomb damping force to be set by a single voltage and so by varying that voltage, real-time adaptation to variations in the mechanical force can be implemented. Similarly the conduction angle of a diode bridge rectifier circuit can be altered by changing the biasing voltage applied. This paper presents a method of achieving this by altering the amount of energy transferred from the pre-biasing capacitor used in SSPB and the diode bridge rectifier to a storage battery via a buck converter. The control system was implemented on a FPGA and consumed 50 μW.

The paper is devoted to a novel study of monophase MEMS electrostatic Vibration Energy Harvester (e-VEH) with conditioning circuit based on Bennet's doubler. Unlike the majority of conditioning circuits that charge a power supply, the circuit based on Bennet's doubler is characterized by the absence of switches requiring additional control electronics, and is free from hardly compatible with batch fabrication process inductive elements. Our experiment with a 0.042 cm³ batch fabricated MEMS e-VEH shows that a pre-charged capacitor as a power supply causes a voltage increase, followed by a saturation which was not reported before. This saturation is due to the nonlinear dynamics of the system and the electromechanical damping that is typical for MEMS. It has been found that because of that coupled behavior there exists an optimal power supply voltage at which output power is maximum. At 187 Hz / 4 g external vibrations the system is shown to charge a 12 V supply with a output power of 1.8 μW.

Power maximisation techniques in wideband vibration energy harvesting typically require the periodic sensing of input power or excitation frequency. This paper presents low- power circuits and sensing methods to obtain this information. First, an excitation frequency measurement circuit is presented that permits a reduced timer run-time compared to reported methods. Second, a power sensing method is presented, which extends the measurement range of reported techniques by adapting to the levels of the available power. Experimental results for the frequency measurement circuit tested in the range 35-51 Hz show a power consumption of 3.7 μW. The power-sensing technique is experimentally validated over a power range of 370690 μW, and its power consumption is 7.5 μW.

This paper presents preliminary results of tuning the resonant frequency of two industrial vibration energy harvesters. The VEH-450 from Ferro Solutions and the PMG17-50 from Perpetuum were tested using discrete reactive electrical loads. The former could be tuned to +0.5 Hz and -2 Hz from its natural resonant frequency of 50.5 Hz at 0.1g. The latter, however, has a broadband output power spectrum that spans ±10 Hz and its output voltage saturates at 7 V_rms, thereby rendering it un-tunable using the method presented here. A comparison of output power between a tuned VEH-450 and an un-tuned PMG17-50, normalised by harvester weight, shows that the former outperforms the latter only at a tuned frequency of 49.8 Hz. A discussion of a resonant frequency tuning circuit that can be fitted to an existing harvester without making modifications to the harvester is presented.

The purpose of energy harvesting is to provide long term alternatives to replaceable batteries across a number of applications. Piezoelectric vibration harvesting provides advantages over other transduction methods due to the ability to generate large voltages even on a small scale. However, the operation in energy harvesting is different from typical sensors or actuators. The applied stress is often at the material limit in order to generate the maximum power output. Under these conditions, the degradation of the materials becomes an important factor for long term deployment. In this work bimorph piezoelectric beams were sub jected to lifetime testing through electromagnetic tip actuation for a large number of cycles. The results of two measurement series at different amplitudes are discussed. The dominant effect observed was a shift in mechanical resonance frequencies of the beams which could be very detrimental to resonant harvesters.

We have demonstrated the pulse poling technique to activate the piezoelectric property of PZT thin films within 1 second. We have fabricated piezoelectric microcantilevers with Si proof mass using Pb(Zr_0.52,Ti_0.48)O₃ (MPB-PZT) thin films. By applying 1 kHz and 100 V of unipolar triangle pulse voltage, the positive piezoelectric constant |d₃₁| of PZT thin film has been enhanced as high as 95 pm/V, which is larger than dc poled PZT thin films (67 pm/V).

This paper presents a small, high-performance and novel device that generates power from vibrations, made using screen-printing to form a piezoelectric thick film directly on a stainless steel substrate. This simple and cheap method realizes a 20 – 40 μm-thick piezoelectric film, otherwise difficult to achieve using thin-film techniques or ceramic sintering, on a stainless steel substrate. A maximum output power of 1.1 mW was recorded with acceleration of 0.1 G_0p (0.98 ms⁻²) applied at a resonance frequency of 24 Hz. We also evaluated the durability of the device by repeatedly striking the tip of the element. Output power exceeding 100 mW under damped resonant vibration was generated at the instant of striking, with approximately 0.9 mJ of power measured per single damped vibration. No deterioration was seen in the integrity of the stainless steel substrate or the piezoelectric thick film after over 10 million strikes.

This paper describes the fabrication and characterization of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) films fired in a liquid-phase sintering process at 900 °C in air. In detail the manufacturing of piezoelectric multilayers with internal pure silver (T_m = 961 °C) electrodes are reported. The feasibility of ten sintering aids in two different volume fractions was investigated for a commercial hard PZT powder (PIC 181, PI Ceramics) with respect to density, microstructure, mechanical behaviour, and piezoelectric properties. Li₂O, Li₂CO₃, PbO, MnO₂, V₂O₅, CuO, Bi₂O₃, the eutectic mixtures Cu₂O·PbO and PbO·WO₃ and the ternary system Li₂CO₃·Bi₂O₃·CuO (LBCu) have been tested as liquid phase sintering aids. The combination of PZT with LBCu showed the best results. With 5 vol.% LBCu an average relative density of 97% and a characteristic breaking strength of 77 MPa was achieved. Composition of PZT with 2 vol.% LBCu exhibits the highest averaged piezoelectrical charge constant (d₃₃) of 181 pC/N.

We present a linear analytical model coupled with experimental analysis to discuss stability of a levitated proof mass (PM) in a micromachined inductive suspension (MIS), which has been previously introduced and characterized. The model is a function of the MIS geometry, describes the dynamics of a levitated disk-shaped PM near the equilibrium point, and predicts conditions for stable levitation. The experimental setup directly measures the lateral component of the Lorentz force, which has a stabilization role in the MIS structure, as well as the vertical levitation force. The experimental setup is further used to derive mechanical parameters such as stiffness values relative to lateral, vertical and angular displacements, proven to be in excellent agreement with the values predicted by the analytical model.

In this paper we present experimental results from an energy harvesting system with two coupled energy harvesters. The energy conversion mechanism of the two coupled energy harvesters is based on the electromagnetic principle. The coupling is generated by two magnets in a repulsive arrangement. In this manner a bistable configuration can be obtained if the gap between the magnets is sufficiently small. We demonstrate that the total power output can be increased in comparison to a linear reference system, if specific conditions are fulfilled. In this respect, the highest power output occurs in the nonlinear region of a monostable system configuration, mostly near the transition to a bistable configuration. On the other hand, the results also indicate, that a bistable operating mode does not necessarily enhance the power output of the coupled system.

This paper reports the design, optimization, and test results of a mechanical amplifier coupled to an electromagnetic energy harvester to generate power from low- amplitude (±1 mm) and low-frequency (<5 Hz) vibrations in the presence of large static displacements. When coupled to a translational kinetic energy harvester, the amplifier boosts small vibration amplitudes by as much as 4x while accommodating translational displacements of more than 10x of vibration amplitudes. A complete electromagnetic energy harvester using this mechanical amplifier produces 16x improvement in output power (30 mW vs 1.9 mW without amplifier at 5 Hz), and a high power density of 170 μW/cm³.

This paper presents an approach for electrodynamic wireless power transmission (EWPT) using a synchronously rotating magnet located in a 3.2 cm³ receiver. We demonstrate wireless power transmission up to 99 mW (power density equal to 31 mW/cm³) over a 5-cm distance and 5 mW over a 20-cm distance. The maximum operational frequency, and hence maximal output power, is constrained by the magnetic field amplitude. A quadratic relationship is found between the maximal output power and the magnetic field. We also demonstrate simultaneous, power transmission to multiple receivers positioned at different locations.