A broadband vibration energy harvester using magnetoelectric transducer

In order for vibration energy harvesters to be efficiently applicable over a range of source frequencies, recently much research has been done to broaden the frequency range of the harvesters using piezoelectric, electromagnetic and electrostatic transductions, but little has been investigated in the harvesters using magnetoelectric transducers. In this paper, a new broadband vibration energy harvester using magneto electric transducer is proposed, which takes advantage of nonlinear magnetic force and multi-cantilever beams to expand the working bandwidth in ambient low frequency vibration. A theoretical model is developed to analyze the nonlinear vibration and electrical-output performances of the harvester. A prototype is fabricated and tested. The experimental results are in agreement with the analytical results, and the harvester shows a bandwidth of 4.6Hz and power density of 0.2-0.51 mW/cm³ over the entire frequency range under an acceleration of 0.2 g.