Development of the magnetic force-induced dual vibration energy harvester using a unimorph cantilever

In this study, a high frequency piezoelectric energy harvester converted from the human low vibrated motion energy was newly developed. This hybrid energy harvester consists of the unimorph piezoelectric cantilever, the pendulum and a pair of permanent magnets. One magnet was attached at the edge of cantilever, and the counterpart magnet at the edge of pendulum. The mechanical energy provided through the human walking motion, which is a typical ubiquitous existence of vibration, is converted to the electric energy via the piezoelectric unimorph cantilever vibration. At first, we studied the energy convert mechanism and analyze the performance of novel energy harvester, where the resonance free vibration of unimorph piezoelectric cantilever generated a high electric power. Next, we equipped the counterpart permanent magnet at the edge of pendulum, which vibrates with a very low frequency caused by the human walking. Then the counterpart magnet was set at the edge of unimorph piezoelectric cantilever, which vibrated with a high frequency. This low-to-high frequency convert “dual vibration system” can be characterized as an enhanced energy harvester. We examined and obtained average values of voltage and power in this system, as 8.31 mV and 0.33 μW. Those results show the possibility to apply for the energy harvester in the portable and implantable Bio-MEMS devices.