Piezoelectric Harvesters and MEMS Technology: Fabrication, Modeling and Measurements

Piezoelectric converters designed for harvesting energy from mechanical vibrations have been fabricated by micromachining technologies. The manufactured piezoelectric energy harvesters have been characterized by applying a sinusoidal oscillation as mechanical input and by using a simple resistive load to measure the output power of the system. A maximum output power of 40μW has been measured for an input vibration having a frequency of 1.8 kHz and an amplitude of 180 nm. A model aimed at estimating the output power of the fabricated piezoelectric structures has been developed and theoretical estimations have been compared with experimental results.