Remote power transfer using magneto-electric devices

Abstract

We report remote power transfer using magneto-electric devices. The experiments were performed at room temperature for piezoelectric beam coupled with electromagnet. Neodymium magnet was used as mass loading. We observed the output power of the order +19.3 to -71.1 dB given the gap between the input and output source was varied from 4 mm to 12 mm for the device (21.3 mm × 3.59 mm × 0.57 mm) with best performance at the resonance peak. We tested the device for frequency sweeps of 10-100 Hz and 100-5000 Hz. This enabled us to figure out the output power for the device at resonant frequencies over a wide frequency range. The device has high input impedance (as opposed to coils) and can be miniaturized aggressively to below 100 μm linear dimensions. The piezoelectric beams have much higher quality factors (Q) larger than 1000 while coils have low Qs (∼ 20) and the harvesting efficiency is proportional to Q.