Piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters with stretched and multistacked organic ferroelectric films

Abstract

We investigated piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters with poly(vinylidene fluoride/trifluoroethylene) films and the improved power generation from using multistacked and stretched ferroelectric films on the cantilevers. The energy harvesters generated electric power with a resonant frequency of approximately 25 Hz, which corresponded to the ambient vibration. The power density of four-layered harvesters was estimated to be 2.5μW/m3, which was larger than the power density of previous harvesters. The output power of stretched-film harvesters was 3.6 times the output obtained from unstretched films. In addition, because organic ferroelectric films are flexible, the resonant frequency of each harvester was practically constant even when using the techniques of multistacking and stretching.