DESIGN, FABRICATION, AND TESTING OF A THERMAL/MECHANICAL/MAGNETIC HYBRID ENERGY MICRO-HARVESTER

Abstract

In this paper, we report a novel hybrid energy micro-harvester. The harvester utilizes ferromagnetic materials combined with piezoelectric cantilever beams to harvest the energy from a thermal, mechanical, and magnetic energy sources and subsequently convert the energy to an electrical output. In addition to energy-harvesting, the harvester utilizes a non-contact approach in its structure to avoid the wear problem which frequently occurs in conventional structural-contact approaches.