Eight parametric resonances in a multi-frequency wideband MEMS piezoelectric vibration energy harvester

This paper presents a multi-order parametric resonant MEMS piezoelectric disk membrane, for the purpose of broadening the operational frequency bandwidth of a vibration energy harvester by employing the nonlinearity-induced bandwidth broadening associated with this phenomenon as well as the multi-frequency response associated with the higher orders. The fundamental mode −3dB bandwidth at 2.0 g recorded 55 Hz, while the first parametric resonant peak exhibited 365 Hz and the −3dB of the first 8 orders accumulated to 604 Hz. The membrane parametric resonator also experimentally demonstrated over 3-folds improvement in power density compared to a conventional direct resonator (cantilever), when subjected to band-limited white noise.