Novel screen printed and flexible low frequency magneto-electric energy harvester

A novel low frequency magneto-electric energy harvester was developed for application in microelectronic devices. The energy harvester was fabricated by screen printing polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) ink, as a piezoelectric layer, on flexible and magnetic Metglas
^®
substrate. Silver (Ag) ink, as top electrode layer, was then deposited on the printed PVDF layer using screen printed technique. The performance of the printed device was investigated by measuring the DC output voltage and maximum power delivered at varying load resistances for a frequency range of 20 Hz to 100 Hz, in steps of 20 Hz. The results demonstrated that the maximum power generated was 8.41 μW at a load resistance of 100 kΩ and frequency of 100 Hz. This relates to a power density of 639.6 μW/cm
³
for the fabricated magneto-electric energy harvester.