Bulk Micromachined Vibration Driven Electromagnetic Energy Harvesters for Self-sustainable Wireless Sensor Node Applications

In this paper, two different electromagnetic energy harvesters using bulk micromachined silicon spiral springs and Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) packaging technique have been fabricated, characterized, and compared to generate electrical energy from ultra-low ambient vibrations under 0.3g. The proposed energy harvesters were comprised of a highly miniaturized Neodymium Iron Boron (NdFeB) magnet, silicon spiral spring, multi-turned copper coil, and PDMS housing in order to improve the electrical output powers and reduce their sizes/volumes. When an external vibration moves directly the magnet mounted as a seismic mass at the center of the spiral spring, the mechanical energy of the moving mass is transformed to electrical energy through the 183 turns of solenoid copper coils. The silicon spiral springs were applied to generate high electrical output power by maximizing the deflection of the movable mass at the low level vibrations. The fabricated energy harvesters using these two different spiral springs exhibited the resonant frequencies of 36Hz and 63Hz and the optimal load resistances of 99Ω and 55Ω, respectively. In particular, the energy harvester using the spiral spring with two links exhibited much better linearity characteristics than the one with four links. It generated 29.02μW of output power and 107.3mV of load voltage at the vibration acceleration of 0.3g. It also exhibited power density and normalized power density of 48.37μW·cm-3 and 537.41μW·cm- 3·g-2, respectively. The total volume of the fabricated energy harvesters was 1cm x 1cm x 0.6cm (height).