Relaxor Piezoelectric Single-Crystal Multilayer Stacks for Energy Harvesting Transducers (RPSEHT)

Energy management is a challenging issue. Accordingly, various energy harvesting technologies have gained attention including harvesting energy from ambient vibration sources using piezoelectric materials. Conventional piezoelectric energy harvesting transducer (PEHT) structures have effective piezoelectric constants that are lower than about 104 pC/N (resonant mode). These low piezoelectric constants lead to conventional PEHTs not being able to harvest electric power effectively. Further, for a specific vibration/motion source, it would be advantageous to maximize the mechanical energy captured from the vibration structure into the piezoelectric device and to convert a greater fraction of that mechanical energy into electrical energy more efficiently.