A SUMMERY RESEARCH REPORT

ON

PIEZO ELECTRIC ENERGY HARVESTING

BY: DINESH PALIKHEL

UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction to the Energy Harvesting...
... 1
2. Concise Classification of Energy Harvesting.
......... 2
3. Introduction to Piezo Electric Energy
Harvesting.. 2
4. Brief Review of Research of Energy Harvesting for
Microelectronics.... 3
5. Conclusion.

.. 6
6. References.
..
7

1. Introduction to the Energy Harvesting

Energy harvesting is the method of converting human energy source and
environment energy source into usable electrical energy. There are several
procedures to harvest energy from wind power, hydropower, solar, ocen waves,
thermoelectricity, piezoelectricity and human source which include human motion
and heat. In last decade, the field of energy harvesting has increasingly become
important as evident from the rising number of publications and product prototypes.
In the recent research on energy harvesting, several applications have been
projected for the energy harvesters covering wide range of civilian and defense
components. Out of these different applications, the prominent use of harvester is
to power the wireless sensor node. A major challenge in the application of multi-hop
sensor networks is supplying power to the nodes. Currently, batteries are being
used to power these devices. However, batteries pose several disadvantages: the
necessity to either replace or recharge them periodically and their big size and
weight compared to high technology. To power the densely populated wireless
sensor nodes in a network is a critical problem due to the high cost of wiring or
replacing batteries. One prominent possibility to overcome these power limitations
is to harvest (extract) energy from the environment to either recharge a battery, or
even to directly power the electronic device. So upcoming research realization on
the energy harvesting would be renewable or sustainable power sources which
would either replace or enhance the capacity of batteries to increase the lifespan
and the reliability of a wireless device or realizing small size and fully self-powered
electronics and to mitigate the environmental pollution caused by inappropriate
disposal and recycling of batteries.

Fig. 1 Schematic of the architecture required for self-powered wireless sensor

network to achieve desired reliability for long period of time
Outdoor solar energy or radiation energy has the capability of providing power
density of 15, 000 W/cm3 which is about two orders of magnitudes higher than
other sources. But the solar energy is not that attractive source of energy in indoor
environments scenario as the power density drops down to as low as 1020 W/cm3.
Mechanical vibrations energy (300 W/cm3) and wind energy (360 W/cm3) are the
other most attractive alternatives. Among the various sources of energy, vibration
energy shows a relatively high power density and among them piezoelectricity has
shown the maximum power density. Another attraction to the research on vibration
sources is that these sources can virtually be found everywhere in the environment.
2. Concise Classification of Energy Harvesting
The energy harvesting techniques can be classified in terms of Energy Source and in
terms of Type of Energy. In terms of Energy Sources it can be divided into two
classes a) Human Energy Source and b) Environment Energy Source. And in terms
of Type of Energy it can be divided into three classes a) Kinetic Energy. b) Thermal
Energy. c) Radiation Energy.
3. Piezo Electric Energy Harvesting
Vibration-based energy harvesting has received growing consideration over the last
decade. The research motivation in this field is due to the reduced power necessity
of small electronic components, such as the wireless sensor networks used in
passive and active monitoring applications. If this can be achieved, the necessity of
an external power source as well as the maintenance expenses for periodic battery
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replacement and the chemical waste of conventional batteries can be reduced

significantly. In vibrational energy for microsystems, the three basic vibration-toelectric energy conversion mechanisms are the electromagnetic, electrostatic and
piezoelectric transductions. Over the last decade, a number of articles have
appeared on the use of these transduction mechanisms for low power generation
from ambient vibrations. Comparing the number of publications that have appeared
using each of these three transduction alternatives, it can be seen that piezoelectric
transduction has received the greatest attention, especially in the last nine years.
Piezoelectric materials have been used as sustainable energy sources since the late
1990s for generating small power under mechanical strains. Piezoelectric power
generation can provide a convenient substitute to traditional power sources to run
certain types of sensors/actuators, telemetry, and MEMS devices. The ultimate goal
in this research field is to power such small electronic devices by using the vibration
energy available in their environment. The main advantages of piezoelectric
materials in energy harvesting (compared to using the other two basic transduction
mechanisms) are their large power densities and ease of application. Voltage
outputs in electromagnetic energy harvesting are typically very low and often
multistage post-processing is required in order to reach a voltage level that can
charge a storage component. In piezoelectric energy harvesting, however, useful
voltage outputs can be obtained directly from the piezoelectric material itself. When
it comes to electrostatic energy harvesting, an input voltage or charge needs to be
applied so that the relative vibratory motion of the capacitor elements creates an
alternating electrical output. On the other hand, the voltage output in piezoelectric
energy harvesting generate from the constitutive behavior of the material, which
eliminates the requirement of an external voltage input. As another advantage,
unlike electromagnetic devices, piezoelectric devices can be fabricated both in
macro-scale and micro-scale due to the well-developed thick-film and thin-film
fabrication techniques. Poor properties of planar magnets and the inadequate
number of turns that can be achieved using planar coils are some of the main
practical limitations in enabling micro-scale electromagnetic energy harvesters.

Fig. 2 Schematic representation of the concept of a piezoelectric energy

harvesting system
4. Brief Review of Research of Energy Harvesting for Microelectronics
Energy

harvesting

thermoelectric

devices
effects,

based

on

implemented

electrodynamic,
through

piezoelectric

and

electromechanical,

microelectomechanical systems and nanotechnological approaches, are attracting

strong academia and commercial interest. A considerable proportion of the cost of
installing a sensor is often due to cabling which supplies power and takes the signal
to some remote location. Further some devices demand wire-free operations, for
example where the sensors are located on a moving component or implanted in a
structure or even within a human body.
Perpetuum is a University of Southampton, UK spin-off. It produces family of
microgenerators which exploit as electrodynamic coil and magnet system. Used
mostly to power sensors for monitoring rotating machinery vibration in the process
and allied industries, the company now propose a device which includes a singlechip RF transceiver and a 16-bit microcontroller, both from Texas Instruments, which
convert the microgenerator into a battery-free wireless vibration sensing system. At
2007 Hannover Fair, German industrial maintenance specialist Pruftechnik showed
what was described as the worlds first low-cost, industrial wireless condition
monitoring system, which uses sensors powered by Perpetuums PMG17-100
microgenerator.
While vibration-based condition monitoring of rotating machines is a relatively
developed discipline, an emerging application for wireless sensors is monitoring
structures, particularly buildings, bridges and overpasses. Recently, these have
gained much attention, particularly in the USA, as in 2006 the Federal Highway
Administration listed 25.8 percent of the nations 596,842 bridges as either
structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. In the one of the tragic case of the
Mississippi River bridge collapse, which resulted in 13 fatalities, the bridge passed a
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visual inspection a year prior to failure. In the most recent bridge failure on
September 25, 2013, 400-foot section of the Leo Frigo Bridge in Wisconsin suddenly
sagged, forcing police to close off the span that carries Interstate 43 over the Fox
River some 120 feet below. The bridge, which carries 40,000 cars a day, had to be
closed indefinitely due to that. Most of the bridges in USA will remain in service for
years to come, they need monitoring and rehabilitation. Equally, the monitoring
needs to evaluate the extent of damage and weakness caused by hurricanes,
earthquakes or terrorist activity. Accordingly efforts are in progress to develop costeffective, real-time monitoring systems and as these types of structures invariably
require many sensors, wire-free devices would offer significant operational and
economic benefits.
University of Michigan engineers has gone through a series of field trials with
battery-powered, wireless crack and vibration sensors and in collaboration with
researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Alamosa Canyon Bridge was
equipped

with

microelectromechanical

systems

(MEMS)

accelerometers

and

wireless sensors. Also in 2008, the Guemdang Bridge in South Korea was fitted with
a network of 14 wireless sensing units, jointly designed by the universities of
Michigan and Standford University. The System which included the sensor, a 4channel 16 bit A/D converter, an 8-bit microcontroller with 128 kB of external SRAM
and a transceiver module operating at 900 MHz, are about the size of a deck of
cards and cost around $100. This equates to $1,400 for the entire system compared
to $10,000-15,000 for a hard-wired alternative. The system took just one hour to
install, compared to an entire day for its cable-based counterpart.
These systems definitely overcome the cost and difficulties of hard wiring. But if the
technology is to be deploy extensively, the regular replacement of millions of
batteries is problematic. However, batteries should not be discarded as an option as
many researchers are working on for the greatly improved types. The research
group in Standford University working with colleagues from Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory and Hitachi High Technologies has invented a battery with
silicon nanowires into a lithium-ion battery. With their research they have discovered
a battery with ten-times the storage capacity of a conventional lithium-ion type.
Among many other important applications, battery-free operation is certainly the
most desirable option in civil engineering. Researchers from Clarkson University,
USA, have invented a system based on electrodynamic energy harvesting. This
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system harvests the vibration of the bridge by an air-core tubular linear generator
consisting of a magnet and coil arrangement which responds to one of the natural
frequencies of the bridge. Each time a vehicle passes over the bridge, the whole
structure vibrates and excites the generator which in turn generates an AC voltage.
They have installed a prototype system on the Route 11 bridge in Potsdam, New
York.
Vibration energy scavenging (VIBES) project was the European Union (EU) funded
4.14 million project which consisted of partners from UK, France, Belgium, The
Netherlands and Switzerland. The project duration was 1st January 2004 to 30 th June
2007. Under this programme the University of Southampton group developed a
piezoelectric energy harvester. This couples the motion of a silicon mass and
cantilever beam to aluminum nitride (AlN) or lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thin films
deposited on the top of the cantilever and was fabricated using standard
micromachining techniques.
Clarkson group which has been discussed earlier also experimented with
piezoelectric energy harvesting but in contrast to the above, these are macro-scale
devices. Advanced Cerametrics is a company producing specialist piezoceramic PZT
fibers in a flexible format and Clarkson group is working with them on macro-scale
PZT energy harvester. They have found that these are far efficient than bulk PZT
materials in converting mechanical to electrical energy and a 2 g element can
readily generate several hundred volts.
Many research groups now have been motivated towards the investigation of the
application of nanotechnology to energy harvesting. A group in the Georgia Institute
of Technology first reported in the journal Science in 2007 that it has exploited the
piezoelectric properties of arrays of vertically-aligned zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires. A
research group at University of Illionois at Urbana Champaign is working for high
power alternatives to the ZnO nanowires. They have been exploring many
alternative materials with higher piezoelectric charge coeffiecients, notably barium
titanate (BaTiO3). They have found that this has coefficients of 85 pC/N compared
with 12 pC/N for ZnO and according to the team, a BaTiO 3 nanowire generates more
than 16-times the output of a similar ZnO nanowire operating under identical
conditions.
Another area of energy harvesting research involves thermoelectric technology, in
which a voltage arises due to a temperature difference via the Peltier effect. The
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German Fraunhofer Institutes has been doing research which is focused on making
use of the thermal energy available in the human body. In a hospital care ward
several medical devices are attached to the patients body to observe variables
such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and breathing rate all of
which requires cables for the power and signals. The Fraunhofer scientists believe
that future medical sensors will work wirelessly and it will transmit data to a central
monitoring station with the help of power drawn from the warmth of the human
body.
Among many applications of the wireless sensor technology, automotive industry
has a great real potential of high volume markets for wireless sensing. Tyre pressure
monitoring system (TPMS) became compulsory on all new cars sold in the USA since
1 September 2007. In present context, the pressure sensors are powered by lithium
batteries but alternative, battery-free approaches are under development.
5. Conclusion
Among many applications of the power from energy harvesting technologies,
wireless sensor Networks (WSNs) offers monumental sector. WSNs offer an
attractive solution to many environmental, security, and process monitoring
problems. Good understanding of the nature of the various energy sources and of
the conversion mechanisms available is very important if the most appropriate
solution for the power is to be attained. Piezoelectric energy harvesting has
comparatively high power density among energy harvesting technologies. With
advancement going on with each energy harvesting technologies, multi energy
harvester which combines different technologies is certainly the upcoming
attraction and challenge in the energy harvesting technologies. From the literature
review and past work it can be seen that piezoelectric energy harvesting is one of
the most widely researched area due to its advantages and future prospects.

6. References
1. Erturk, A. and Inman, D.J. (2011), Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting. West Sussex:
John Wiley & Sons.
2. Gilbert, J. and Balouchi, F. (2008), Comparison of energy harvesting systems for
wireless sensor networks, International Journal of Automation and Computing 05
(4), pp. 334347
3. Karunarathna, R.K. (2013), Enhanced PVDF Film for Multi Energy Harvesting,
Masters Thesis, University of Mississippi.
4. Mateu, L. and Moll, F. (2005), Review of Energy Harvesting Techniques and
Applications for Microelectronics, Proceedings of SPIE The International Society
for Optical Engineering, VLSI Circuits and Systems II, 5837, pp. 359373.
5. Priya, S. and Inman. (2009), Energy Harvesting Technologies. New York: Springer.