Recent advances in piezoelectric energy harvesting: materials, configurations, optimization techniques, and emerging applications

Abstract

Piezoelectric energy harvesting (PEH) is a promising technology for self-powered sensing systems in applications ranging from wireless sensor networks to biomedical sensors. There have been many advances but it has yet to be widely implemented due to its low-power output, narrow frequency range and overall difficulty of implementation into a system. This review presents a quantitative analysis of recent developments in PEH covering materials and structural configurations as well as performance enhancement strategies and optimization approaches. This paper presents a comparative framework that links material properties, structural design, and system performance metrics such as power density, bandwidth, and efficiency into a unified framework. Electromechanical coupling and scalability of advanced piezoelectric materials, specifically lead-free ceramics, polymer composites and nanostructured systems are reviewed. Broadband energy harvesting is evaluated for structural innovations including non-linear bistable systems, multi-modal configurations, and frequency up-conversion mechanisms. The convergence and applications of optimization methods that are metaheuristic and recent intelligent approaches are also examined. By analyzing each harvesting technique there are some trade-offs that can be made when choosing to implement one over another such as harvested power, frequency range and system complexity. Finally, this paper highlights current research gaps and future work areas, focusing on self-powered multimodal sensors, piezo-pyroelectric hybrid energy harvesting systems, AI-based adaptive tuning, and large-scale deployment practices. These emerging technologies demonstrate significant potential for autonomous sensing in wearable electronics, healthcare, environmental monitoring, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. This review aims to provide more information on system-level considerations when designing high efficiency piezoelectric harvesting systems.