Material Design for Self Powered Cranial Drill using Piezoelectric effect – A COMSOL Study

Abstract

Self powered hand handled biomedical instruments are of demand in industries. Piezoelectric energy harvester is one of the most efficient energy harvesters now in use to harvest electrical energy from the ambient mechanical energy sources such as touch, small vibrations etc. This unique property of the piezoelectric materials opens a wide area of applications in the fields like sensors, actuators etc. A bimorph cantilever based piezoelectric energy harvester is of great interest due to the sustained vibrations that can be produced on single input pressure by the user. In this paper we propose on material based design strategy of this cantilever structure for energy harvesting by piezoelectric effect. The study is carried out by replacing the electrode material with Structural Steel, Gold (Au) and Copper (Cu). The piezoelectric materials like PZT 5A (Lead Zirconate Titanate), ZnO (Zinc Oxide), ZnS (Zinc Sulphide), Bismuth Germanate (BGO) are used in combination with the electrode materials and their performance is evaluated.