Vibration energy harvester with piezoelectric properties using polyurea thin films

ABSTRACT

We investigated the piezoelectric properties of a vibration energy harvester using large-area, flexible cantilevers composed of polyurea thin films. The piezoelectric constant d₃₁ of the polyurea films was measured based on the relationship between the displacement and applied voltage of large-aspect-ratio cantilevers. Centimeter-scale unimorph cantilevers were fabricated, and their energy harvester performance was evaluated by vibrating them. The power generation of the cantilevers with controlled forms was 2.2 mV at 50.5 Hz (i.e., vibration generation could be efficiently realized at environmental vibrations under 100 Hz).

KEYWORDS:

• Energy harvester
• piezoelectric
• polyurea
• thin films

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Unitika Ltd. for supplying the polyureas.

Funding

This work was partly supported by the MIKIYA Science and Technology Foundation, CREST JST and JSPS KAKENHI under grant numbers 16K17513, 16K05003, and 15K13817.