A MEMS-based energy harvester for generating energy from non-resonant environmental vibrations

Date

2013-11-01

Author

Zorlu, Ozge
Külah, Haluk

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

230
views

0
downloads

This paper presents a non-resonant vibration based electromagnetic MEMS energy harvester, which generates energy from low frequency vibrations with low displacement amplitude. The harvester is composed of an energy harvester chip, housing two electroplated copper micro coils realized on parylene cantilevers and a miniature NdFeB magnet with two mechanical barrier arms. The structure uses the mechanical frequency up conversion (mFupC) principle for energy generation. The non-resonant operation is maintained by attaching the chip and the magnet to two different platforms, which move with respect to each other. The prototype generates 2.1 mV RMS voltage and 18.5 nW RMS power from both coils on the average, under 10 Hz, 5 mm peak to peak (1 g) external vibrations. The RMS value of the generated voltage during the mFupC duration is calculated as 9.5 mV, leading to 363 nW power and 1.1 mu J energy delivery from each coil to equivalent resistive loads at each occurrence of the mFupC. Serial connection of the coils is also studied and it is concluded that this configuration has a non-significant effect on the generated power since the waveforms of the coil voltages have both phase and resonance frequency differences, canceling out some portion of the signal when they are added together. During the tests, it is observed that excessive stress around the cantilever fixed edges eventually break the coil lines at this region. This is handled by applying an epoxy to this region, lowering the stress on the copper line. With this configuration, the generated power is slightly reduced due to the decreased resonance frequency and increased damping ratio of the cantilevers. The epoxy-applied prototype has been tested under various vibration conditions with no damage on the coil, and the non-resonant operation behavior of the energy harvester has been verified.

Subject Keywords

Energy harvesting, Vibration, MEMS coil, Non-resonant harvester, Mechanical frequency up conversion (mFupC), Electromagnetic energy generation

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/48856

Journal

SENSORS AND ACTUATORS A-PHYSICAL

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sna.2013.01.032

Collections

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

An Electromagnetic Micro-Power Generator for Low Frequency Vibrations with Tunable Resonance Türkyılmaz, Serhan; Muhtaroglu, A.; Külah, Haluk (2011-09-07) This paper presents an electromagnetic (EM) micro-power generator with tunable resonance frequency which can harvest energy from low frequency environmental vibrations. The reported power generator up-converts low frequency environmental vibrations before mechanical-to-electrical energy conversion by utilizing two diaphragms with different resonance frequencies. Power is generated through electromagnetic induction by a magnet attached to the low frequency diaphragm, and a 50 turn, 2.1 Omega coil, and a magn...
An electromagnetic energy harvesting system for low frequency applications with a passive interface ASIC in standard CMOS Rahimi, Arian; Zorlu, Ozge; Muhtaroglu, Ali; Külah, Haluk (2012-12-01) This paper presents a compact energy harvesting system, which consists of an electromagnetic (EM) generator converting ambient low frequency vibrations to DC voltage by using a highly efficient full-wave rectifier in a System-on-Package (Sop). Frequency Up-Conversion technique has been utilized by the in-house EM transducer to harvest energy from very low frequency vibrations (<5 Hz). The interface ASIC is a passive rectifier based on the boot-strap rectification (BSR) technique to decrease the effective th...
A Vibration-Based Electromagnetic Energy Harvester Using Mechanical Frequency Up-Conversion Method Zorlu, Ozge; Topal, Emre Tan; Külah, Haluk (2011-02-01) This paper presents a new vibration-based electromagnetic energy harvester using a mechanical frequency up-conversion method for harvesting energy from external low-frequency vibrations within a range of 1-10 Hz. The structure consists of a magnet placed on a diaphragm, a polystyrene cantilever carrying a pick-up coil, and a mechanical barrier which converts low-frequency vibrations to a higher frequency, hence increasing the efficiency of the system. The tested structure proved to generate 88.6 mV and 544....
A Self-Powered Rectifier Circuit for Low-Voltage Energy Harvesting Applications Ulusan, Hasan; Gharehbaghi, Kaveh; Zorlu, Ozge; Muhtaroglu, Ali; Külah, Haluk (2012-12-05) This paper presents a fully self-powered low voltage and low power active rectifier circuit for vibration-based electromagnetic (EM) energy harvesters. A passive AC/DC doubler is used to provide a supply voltage for the active rectifier circuit. The proposed circuit is designed using standard 90 nm TSMC CMOS technology. The simulation results show that the proposed active rectifier circuit has voltage conversion ratio higher than 150% when the input peak voltage is more than 100 mV at open-load condition. T...
A Mechanical Frequency Up-Conversion Mechanism for Vibration Based Energy Harvesters Zorlu, Ozge; Topal, Emre Tan; Külah, Haluk (2009-10-28) This paper presents a new mechanical frequency up-conversion (FUC) mechanism for harvesting energy from external low frequency vibrations. The structure consists of a magnet placed on a support, a polystyrene cantilever carrying a pick-up coil, and a mechanical barrier which converts low frequency vibrations to a higher frequency, hence increasing the efficiency of the system. The tested structure proved to give 20.3 mV and 68.7 mu W RMS power output by up-converting 10 Hertz external vibration to 643 Hertz...

Citation Formats

O. Zorlu and H. Külah, “A MEMS-based energy harvester for generating energy from non-resonant environmental vibrations,” SENSORS AND ACTUATORS A-PHYSICAL, pp. 124–134, 2013, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/48856.