A feasibility study of fabrication of piezoelectric energy harvesters on commercially available aluminum foil

Abstract

In this paper, we present zinc oxide (ZnO)-based flexible harvesting devices employing commercially available, cost-effective thin aluminum (Al) foils as substrates and conductive bottom electrodes. From the device fabrication point of view, Al-foils have a relatively high melting point, allowing for device processing and annealing treatments at elevated temperatures, which flexible plastic substrate materials cannot sustain because of their relatively low melting temperatures. Moreover, Al-foil is a highly cost-effective, commercially available material. In this work, we fabricated and characterized various kinds of multilayered thin-film energy harvesting devices, employing Al-foils in order to verify their device performance. The fabricated devices exhibited peak-to-peak output voltages ranging from 0.025 V to 0.140 V. These results suggest that it is feasible to employ Al-foils to fabricate energy-efficient energy harvesting devices at relatively high temperatures. It is anticipated that with further process optimization and device integration, device performance can be further improved.