Title: MEMS wideband vibrational energy harvesting

Introduction:
To connect Internet capability to everything – known as ‘Internet of Things’
enhances the keen to employ a suitable technological area which can lead to a
connected world of tiny, autonomous and self-powered Wireless Sensor Nodes
that would transform our environment smart and responsive. The lack of suitable
and reliable power sources to operate the sensors for a long time resists the path
of application of WSNs in remote areas [1]. Though the recent technological
advancements ensured less power consumption in different electronic devices,
still the problem of reliable power sources is yet to be resolved. In this situation,
harvesting electrical energy from ambient mechanical vibrations is a possible
solution where Vibrational Energy Harvesters are employed for the transduction
operation. Vibrational Energy Harvesters are generally composed of a mechanical
oscillator and a transducer which can be electromagnetic, piezoelectric,
electrostatic etc. [2]. The electromagnetic energy harvesters are of special
interest due to their low output impedance and high output impedance which
provides a good impedance matching property. But the application of this
mechanism in micro-scale is difficult due to realization of multiple-turn coils and
permanent magnets using MEMS technology [3]. The linear resonant oscillator
based VEHs are restricted to application due to their limitation of efficiency to
convert natural vibrations into electrical energy because of their narrow
bandwidth [4].The possible ways to overcome this disadvantage are resonant
frequency tuning [5, 6], energy harvesting from multiple modes [7] and nonlinear
energy harvesting. Due to difficulties of complicated fabrication technology and
smaller device size, the best way to achieve wideband capability in MEMS based
VEH is to design a suitable model of the mechanical structure. For this purpose,
multiple MEMS cantilevers with different physical dimensions are employed that
feature different resonant frequencies or activation of multiple modes within
close frequency range. However, another way to achieve wide band capability is
to implement nonlinearity in the system.
Recent Works:
Many researches have been done to design a wideband VEH using MEMS
techniques. An electromagnetic generator was designed using moving soil which
was capable of producing 4 nW power at 700 Hz [8]. Glynne-Jones et al designed
an electromagnetic micro-generator whose resonant frequency was found to be
322 Hz and it was capable of producing 37 W power at beam amplitude of 0.36
mm at 0.6 Ω load resistance [9]. Bing Yang et al designed a multi-frequency
energy harvester consisting of three permanent magnets and the planar micro-
coils and the resonant frequencies were found to be 369 Hz, 938 Hz and 1184 Hz
and the maximum output voltage and power corresponding to the first and
second modes were found to be 1.38 mV, 0.6 W and 3.2 mV, 3.2 W [7]. A small
electromagnetic vibration energy harvesting device was designed which was
capable of delivering 46 W power to a resistive load of 4KΩ at a vibration level of
60 mg at a resonant frequency of 52 Hz [10]. A piezoelectric-electromagnetic
coupled energy harvester was designed by Chella et al which had produced 322
W peak power at 21.6 Hz resonant frequency [11]. Another combined
multimodal energy harvester was designed that produced 0.25 W peak power at
35 g acceleration and 20 Hz frequency using electromagnetic mechanism [12].
Kulkarni et al demonstrated three prototypes of electromagnetic generators
where Prototype A delivered a maximum 148 nW output power at 8.08 KHz and
3.9 m/s2 acceleration, Prototype B generated 23 nW power at 9.83 KHz at an
acceleration of 9.8 m/s2 whereas Prototype C produced 586 nW load power at 60
Hz frequency and 8.829 m/s2 acceleration [13]. Another paper suggested the
design of an EM generator on silicon which produced maximum output voltage
and output power of 55 mV and 70 W respectively [14]. Podder et al designed
and fabricated a nonlinear bistable EM generator using FR4 material which
produced 22 W at an acceleration of 0.5 g and 35 Hz frequency [15]. For
bandwidth widening, bistable nonlinearity was introduced by repulsively oriented
NdFeB magnets [16]. An EM energy harvester was introduced using FR4 as the
spring material which showed an increase in the operational bandwidth of about
10 Hz at 1 g acceleration [17]. A MEMS based EM vibration energy harvester was
developed using double layer micro-coils and NdFeB magnets which generated
0.68 W load power at 0.1 g acceleration [18]. A nonlinear EM generator was
designed in which non-linearity was introduced through the stretching strain
added with bending of the fixed-guided beams. It showed about 80 Hz half-power
bandwidth with maximum load power of 2.8 W [19].

Proposed Plan of Work:

With reference to the work by Bin Yang et al [7], a model can be proposed as
shown in the Figure 1 below. The model will consist of three permanent magnets
with similar gaps between them attached with an acrylic beam. In addition to this,
two sets of repulsively oriented NdFeB magnets (RM1-RM2 & RM3-RM4) will be
inserted in between the gaps of the permanent magnets. The purpose of these
magnet sets will be to introduce nonlinearity into the system. RM1 and RM3 will
be attached to the acrylic beam and RM2 and RM4 will be attached to the FR4
base. Three planar micro-coils will be fabricated on the FR4 base of the model and
they will be fabricated just under the three permanent magnets. The gap
between the coil and the magnets will be maintained by two supports at the two
ends of the beam. Voltage will finally be drawn from the three planar micro-coils.
There will be three modes of vibration of the beam, and introducing nonlinearity
into the system, the bandwidth will be possibly enhanced.

Figure 1
Another model can be proposed which is shown in Figure 2. It will consist of a FR4
beam with two NdFeB magnets attached at the base of the beam as shown in
figure. Two planar micro-coils (C) will be fabricated at the base and will be
positioned just below these magnets to link the change of magnetic flux. In
addition to this, two sets of repulsively oriented magnets will be inserted into this
model to introduce nonlinearity in the system. Two magnets will be attached to
the two extreme ends of the beam, whereas the other two will be placed in front
of it in repulsive orientation. The gap between these magnet sets will be varied to
change the degree of nonlinearity of the system.

Figure 2

For both the models we will check how these devices response apart from their
resonant frequency i.e. their wideband response.
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