Polymer-Based Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for Low-Frequency Vibration Using Frequency Up-Conversion Driven by Collision with a Flexible Beam

Abstract

This paper reports a polymer-based piezoelectric vibration energy harvester using mechanical frequency up-conversion driven by collision with a flexible beam, targeting for low-frequency vibration (under 10 Hz). By driving the flexible beam with low-frequency, the beam periodically hits against the underlying impact-driven piezoelectric component and excites the free oscillation, i.e. frequency up-conversion. We verified the validity of the proposed method by FEM analysis and the proposed vibration energy harvester showed 32 μW at 9 Hz of excitation frequency.