1-mW Vibration Energy Harvester Based on a Cantilever with Printed Polymer Multilayers
Nicolas Godard, Lucas Allirol, Antoine Latour, Sebastjan Glinšek, Mathieu Gérard, Jérôme Polesel‐Maris, Fabrice Domingues Dos Santos, Emmanuel Defaÿ
Abstract
Energy harvesters are required for autonomous sensors. The field is still missing a low-cost technology that would provide enough power for tangible low-frequency use cases, although triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) have emerged as a new energy technology. Standard vibration energy harvesters (VEHs) are based either on bulky electromagnetic systems or stiff lead-based piezo-ceramics. Those systems are rarely compatible with large deformations that occur at low frequency such as body movements. Here, we show that a stack of 10 thin layers of poly(vinylidene fluoride trifluoroethylene) screen printed on a polymer substrate can harvest up to 0.97 mW at 33 Hz with an area of only 2.4 cm2. These results are obtained with a lead-free, cost-effective, and scalable technique at 150°C, competing with TENG solutions. This VEH can work for at least 107 cycles while harvesting sufficient energy to feed a microcontroller that communicate wirelessly with a mobile phone.