title: Consideration of impedance matching techniques for efficient piezoelectric energy harvesting.
abstract: This study investigates multiple levels of impedance-matching methods for piezoelectric energy harvesting in order to enhance the conversion of mechanical to electrical energy. First, the transduction rate was improved by using a high piezoelectric voltage constant (g) ceramic material having a magnitude of g33 = 40 x 10(-3) V m/N. Second, a transducer structure, cymbal, was optimized and fabricated to match the mechanical impedance of vibration source to that of the piezoelectric transducer. The cymbal transducer was found to exhibit approximately 40 times higher effective strain coefficient than the piezoelectric ceramics. Third, the electrical impedance matching for the energy harvesting circuit was considered to allow the transfer of generated power to a storage media. It was found that, by using the 10-layer ceramics instead of the single layer, the output current can be increased by 10 times, and the output load can be reduced by 40 times. Furthermore, by using the multilayer ceramics the output power was found to increase by 100%. A direct current (DC)-DC buck converter was fabricated to transfer the accumulated electrical energy in a capacitor to a lower output load. The converter was optimized such that it required less than 5 mW for operation.
authors.affiliation: Automation and Robotics Research Institute, University of Texas, Arlington, TX 76019, USA. hyeoungwookim@gmail.com
authors.forename: Hyeoungwoo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Shashank
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Priya
authors.forename: Harry
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Stephanou
authors.forename: Kenji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Uchino
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D017097:Electric Impedance; D004563:Electrochemistry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004735:Energy Transfer; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D014159:Transducers; D014732:Vibration