Vibrational Energy Harvesting

Vibration-powered generators are typically inertial spring and mass systems which employ three main transduction mechanisms to extract energy from vibrations: piezoelectric, electromagnetic and electrostatic. This chapter presents a short overview of the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) energy harvesters employing both piezoelectric and electromagnetic effects both proposed in the literature and developed in the framework of the Nanofunction project. It presents a short overview of state-of-the-art vibration energy transducers employing the piezoelectric effect. The chapter illustrates the near-field characterization techniques as well as electromechanical modeling and simulation required for the design of the energy harvesting transducers. It reviews the electromagnetic generators presented in the literature including large-scale discrete devices and integrated versions, where the results achieved on vibration energy harvester exploiting both electromagnetic and piezoelectric effects are derived. Modeling and simulation results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed device concepts.