Design and Characterization of an Interdigitated Electrode PVDF based Energy Harvesting Device

Recently, many researcher was studied on energy harvesting. There are two environments of energy harvester namely outdoor activities and indoor activities. The indoor sources can be obtained from plant microbial fuel cells, vibration energy from machine, and radio frequency energy or electromagnetic energy from telecommunications signal. This paper is interested in vibration energy. One of the material that can convert mechanical energy ie vibration to electrical energy is piezoelectric material. Piezoelectric material can convert stress i.e vibration into charge i.e electrical energy. This paper is proposed an interdigitated electrodes (IDE) pattern with unimoprh piezoelectric cantilever generator (PCG) with flame retardant 4 (FR4) for energy harvesting device. PVDF is used as piezoelectric material. The characterization of IDE with different finger length and width are discussed. The PVDF is used as sensing element and targeted to increase the displacement because of their flexibility. Three designs have been developed in difference sizes of electrode finger width, 0.5mm, 1.0mm and 2.0mm with the same gap between electrode finger, 0.5mm. The experiments were characterized the pressure effect to energy harvester, the vibration effect to energy harvester and frequency of tap on energy harvester effect to energy storage. The results are show that the size of finger width 2.0 mm will produce more energy compare to 0.5 mm and 1.0 mm. The electrode finger width 2.0 mm is used as an energy harvesting device and did the experiment of energy harvest stored in capacitor.