Design and Development of Piezoelectric PVDF Sensor With Copper, Graphene, Cobalt With PMMA for Energy Harvesting

Energy harvesting is a major concern in today’s world because the existing electrical infrastructure is extremely wasteful in its use of energy. Today’s technologies used in electricity generation are not energy efficient. Piezoelectric sensors can convert physical energy into electrical energy efficiently and the process is cost efficient as well.Piezoelectric PVDF sensors with copper, graphene and cobalt along with addition of PMMA has been fabricated and the characterized for XRD, FTIR and SEM.. In XRD, beta phase is obtained to determine piezoelectricity. SEM images reveals porosity and thread like structure for better piezoelectricity. FTIR Peaks are obtained at 1399 & 1411 confirming PVDF. The results have been inferenced with a improvement in the properties of the PVDF material. The fabricated sensors are tested using an oscilloscope. The change is voltage is detected on application of pressure or vibrations on the sensor. PVDF demonstrates the highest piezoelectricity. It is used for energy harvesting which means that physical energy is utilized to produce an electrical energy to power electrical devices and equipments. Using IC LTC3588, on giving vibrations/pressure as the input to the PVDF sensor the generated voltage is rectified and amplified by the IC to light up the LED on the trainer kit, which requires a minimum of 3 Volts.In this paper, design, fabricate and characterize piezoelectric films is done and detected voltage from the fabricated films and perform energy harvesting by conversion of vibrational energy given to the film to electrical energy. Finally, results were compared by the addition of PMMA and without it