Capacitive Energy Harvesters

Conference: Energieautarke Sensorik - 5. GMM-Workshop: Mikrosensorik mit autarker Energieversorgung und drahtloser Signalübertragung
11/12/2008 - 11/13/2008 at Düsseldorf, Germany

Proceedings: Energieautarke Sensorik

Pages: 4Language: englishTyp: PDF

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Authors:
Kloub, Hussam; Manoli, Yiannos (Chair of Microelectronics, Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK), University of Freiburg, Germany)
Hoffmann, Daniel; Folkmer, Bernd; Manoli, Yiannos (HSG-IMIT – Institute of Micromachining and Information Technology, Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany)

Abstract:
State of the art prototypes of capacitive energy harvesters are presented. The prototypes have various characteristics and various values of output power, which ranges from 38nW to 0.585mW. The prototypes are investigated in order to develop design strategies to ensure the best possible output power generation. A nonlinear model of a capacitive energy harvester based on electret is implemented in Simulink. The output power response is investigated for two main design topologies of the harvester; i.e. the area overlapping and gap closing variable capacitor. The harvester of area overlapping capacitor shows larger output power at smaller values of electret voltages compared to the gap closing one.