Research on Piezoelectric Generators for Vibration Energy Harvesting

Ambient energy harvesting has been in recent years the recurring object of a number of research efforts aimed at providing an autonomous solution to the powering of small scale electronic mobile devices. Among the different solutions, vibration energy harvesting has played a major role due to the almost universal presence of mechanical vibrations. In the paper, a piezoelectric cantilever device for harvesting the ambient low-frequency vibration energy is designed, and influences of its structure on output voltage and power generation capacity are studied also. The study results show that the piezoelectric cantilever can produce enough power energy which meets the operation requirements of sensors in wireless networks. It provides a method and corresponding theoretical basis for the harvesting of ambient low-frequency vibration energy and the design of self-supply devices for sensors in wireless networks.