Broadband, Tunable, Miniaturized Vibration Energy Harvester Using Nonlinear Elastomer Beams and Stretchable Interconnects

A miniaturized vibration energy harvester, a small yet sustainable power source that converts ambient mechanical vibration into electricity, is considered as a key technology to advance wireless sensor networks for the internet of things. Conventional chip-scale vibration energy harvesters, such as microelectromechanical systems devices that are mostly based on rigid materials (e.g., silicon), inherently exhibit high resonant frequency, narrow bandwidth, and a single peak frequency. Therefore, they are often unsuitable for many real-life applications, as most ambient vibrations have low frequency, broad spectrum, and time variant resonance. Here, an unconventional, soft-rigid hybrid architecture for vibration energy harvesting, which is inspired by soft electronics, is presented to overcome these limitations. By harnessing soft materials undergoing large deformation, the reported device is designed and tested to demonstrate its energy harvesting performance with high miniaturization, low operation frequency, broadband spectrum, and resonant frequency tuning.