Electrostatic energy harvesting device with dual resonant structure for wideband random vibration sources at low frequency.

In this paper, we present design and test of a broadband electrostatic energy harvester with a dual resonant structure, which consists of two cantilever-mass subsystems each with a mass attached at the free edge of a cantilever. Comparing to traditional devices with single resonant frequency, the proposed device with dual resonant structure can resonate at two frequencies. Furthermore, when one of the cantilever-masses is oscillating at resonance, the vibration amplitude is large enough to make it collide with the other mass, which provides strong mechanical coupling between the two subsystems. Therefore, this device can harvest a decent power output from vibration sources at a broad frequency range. During the measurement, continuous power output up to 6.2-9.8 μW can be achieved under external vibration amplitude of 9.3 m/s2 at a frequency range from 36.3 Hz to 48.3 Hz, which means the bandwidth of the device is about 30% of the central frequency. The broad bandwidth of the device provides a promising application for energy harvesting from the scenarios with random vibration sources. The experimental results indicate that with the dual resonant structure, the vibration-to-electricity energy conversion efficiency can be improved by 97% when an external random vibration with a low frequency filter is applied.