Electrostatic Energy Harvesting with Multilayer Film Capacitor Devices

An electrostatic multilayer thin film energy harvesting device is presented. First the fabrication and the theoretical model of the device is discussed. The theoretical model was used to determine an optimized device for given constraints. The most important constraint was the maximum thickness of the device. For a given thickness the optimized number of layers was calculated. The fundamental behavior could be confirmed experimentally. The simple fabrication of the devices allows building inexpensive electrostatic energy harvesters.