A possible reality on battery-less low-power portable electronics

Electrical energy is vital to our daily activities. However, energy cost is increasing while much energy is being wasted into the environment. If we can capture these wasted energies, efficiency of energy utilization will be enhanced, and this is the idea of energy harvesting. Unfortunately, the existing technology for harvesting environmental energy and converting it to useful DC power cannot store the captured energy due to the leaky nature of the device, and hence the output power is generally low. In this work, we present a novel energy harvesting concept through a working circuit. Using electromagnetic energy source as an example, the proposed circuit is capable of converting low power energy to a DC voltage about 2.5 V.