A 10-mV-Startup-Voltage Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting System With a Piezoelectric Starter

An ultra-low-startup-voltage thermoelectric energy harvesting system assisted by a piezoelectric generator (PEG) is presented in this paper. When the energy harvesting system is implemented in a place where there is mechanical vibration, the associated PEG can generate a stable clock signal and drive the boost converter to start from the cold state even at extremely low thermoelectric generator (TEG) voltage. The proposed system is designed and simulated in a 180-nm BCD process. The simulations show that the proposed system can start the TEG system from the cold state from as low as 10 mV of TEG voltage while keeping a 63.9% efficiency. The peak power conversion efficiency is achieved at 74.9% when the TEG voltage is 50 mV.