Material influence in newly proposed ferroelectric energy harvesters

Abstract

Recently, a novel method for mechanical energy harvesting has been proposed, which is based on stress-induced polarization switching in ferroelectric materials. Compared with the traditional piezoelectric energy harvesters, a huge improvement in the output energy has already been theoretically demonstrated. In this article, the influence of different materials on the energy-harvesting performance associated with this new strategy is further studied. The state-of-the-art phase-field model is adopted to investigate the nonlinear hysteretic energy-harvesting process in two nanoscale ferroelectric energy harvesters, which are respectively based on two typical ferroelectric materials—single-crystal BaTiO3 and PbTiO3. In both cases, the effects of the bias voltage and bias resistance are carefully investigated and the optimum values are obtained. Later, the energy-harvesting process and energy flow details in both harvesters working at the optimum conditions are presented and carefully compared in the context of real applications. Furthermore, the energy-harvesting performance of a BaTiO3-based nanoscale piezoelectric energy harvester with equivalent material size is additionally simulated with the finite element method and compared with the corresponding results of the ferroelectric energy harvesters, where obvious advantages associated with the new strategy are demonstrated.