Liquid-crystal-enhanced electrostatic vibration generator

In this paper, we proposed electrostatic/electret energy harvester using liquid crystal as the medium between the electrodes for increasing the capacitance change during vibration. With the aid of anisotropic permittivity of the liquid crystal, significantly higher output power than conventional generators with the air-filled gap is predicted. By using nematic liquid crystal, 4-Cyano-4'-n-pentylbiphenyl (5CB) with large positive anisotropic permittivity, power output of 440 μW has been obtained at 10 Hz and 1.00 mm
_p-p
in-plane vibration.