Simulation and Fabrication of Wagon-Wheel-Shaped Piezoelectric Transducer for Raindrop Energy Harvesting Application

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• 作者：Chin Hong Wong ; Zuraini Dahari…
• 关键词：PVDF ; raindrop energy ; vibration ; piezoelectric ; energy harvesting ; fabrication
• 刊名：Journal of Electronic Materials
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：March 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：46
• 期：3
• 页码：1587-1597
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Chemistry and Materials Science
• 刊物主题：Optical and Electronic Materials; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Electronics and Microelectronics, Instrumentation; Solid State Physics;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1543-186X
• 卷排序：46

文摘

Harvesting vibrational energy from impacting raindrops using piezoelectric material has been proven to be a promising approach for future outdoor applications, providing a good alternative resource that can be applied in outdoor rainy environments. We present herein an optimum novel polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric transducer specifically developed to harvest raindrop energy. The finite-element method was applied for simulation and optimization of the piezoelectric raindrop energy harvester (PREH) using COMSOL Multiphysics software, investigating the electrical potential, surface charge density, and total displacement for different transducer dimensions. According to the simulation results, the structure that generated the highest electrical potential and surface charge density was a wagon-wheel-shaped structure consisting of six spokes with wheel diameter of 30 mm, spoke width of 2 mm, center pad diameter of 6 mm, and thickness of 25 μm. This optimum wagon-wheel-shaped device was then fabricated by spin coating of PVDF, sputtering of aluminum, a poling process, and computer numerical control machining of a polytetrafluoroethylene stand. The fabricated PREH was characterized by x-ray diffraction analysis and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. Finally, the fabricated PREH was tested under actual rain conditions with an alternating current to direct current converter connected in parallel, revealing that a single cell could generate average peak voltage of 22.5 mV and produce electrical energy of 3.4 nJ from ten impacts in 20 s.