This paper presents a review of MEMS based piezoelectric energy harvesting for low frequency and low power applications. An introduction to MEMS and its components along with the concept of energy harvesting is presented. The paper also presents a device configuration of cantilever based basic components of MEMS energy harvesters, i.e. unimorph, bimorph. Results of different designs for MEMS en...

A 2 DOF resonant thorax structure has been designed and fabricated for the MFI project. Miniature piezoelectric PZN-PT unimorph actuators were fabricated and used to drive a four-bar transmission mechanism. The current thorax design utilizes two actuated four-bars and a spherical joint to drive a rigid wing. Rotationally compliant flexure joints have been tested with lifetimes over 10 cycles. W...

Abstract Piezoelectric transducers which rely on oscillating cantilever-type beams to harvest mechanical energy locally available in environments have been of great interest as a substitute for batteries. Most the research efforts focus mostly designs aim at resonance matching achieve maximum output without taking degradation piezoelectric layers into consideration. The purpose this study is pr...

We have examined both experimentally and theoretically a piezoelectric unimorph cantilever as a liquid viscosity-and-density sensor. The fabricated piezoelectric unimorph consisted of a PbO•ZrO2•TiO2 ~PZT! layer on a thin stainless-steel plate. In addition to a driving electrode, a sensing electrode was placed on top of the PZT layer, permitting the direct measurement of the resonance frequency...

The process of capturing the energy from a system’s environment or surrounding and converting it into usable electrical energy is termed as energy harvesting. One form of energy harvesting is to employ piezoelectric materials to harvest energy from vibrating structures. These materials have the ability to absorb the mechanical energy and transform it into electrical energy that can be used to p...