SBIR Phase I: Advanced Micro Vibration Energy Harvesters for Energy-Autonomous Internet of Things

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to address the power problem, which significantly limits the deployment and functionality of next generation wireless sensors and internet-of-things (IoT) nodes and inhibits their impact on energy and efficiency savings in the most needed areas of smart manufacturing, smart transportation, and building automation. Most high-impact IoT applications typically require miniaturization and placement of wireless sensor nodes in hard-to-service locations in vast numbers, where the battery replacement or electrical wiring is not practical or too costly. This research and development effort will explore the fundamental and technological limits of vibration energy harvesters, and development of novel micro vibration energy harvesters with high power density, multi-axis operation capability, and wider frequency bandwidth. These low-cost micro vibration energy harvesters aim to enable energy-autonomous wireless sensor nodes that will open up new markets and high-impact applications for self-powered IoT nodes, achieve energy savings and increased efficiency in multiple industries due to enabled continuous data gathering, reduce the ecological footprint of millions of wasted toxic batteries, and significantly decrease the maintenance cost of industrial IoT networks. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop a millimeter-scale vibration energy harvester that can provide high power density, multi-axis operation capability and sufficiently wide operation bandwidth, as a maintenance-free and low-cost renewable power source for next-generation industrial IoT nodes. Existing vibration energy harvesters have limited practical applications in real life, as they suffer from large size, high-cost, low power density, high operation frequency, and extremely narrow frequency bandwidths. Moreover, commercial harvesters can only operate at a single vibrational axis and cannot harvest efficiently from complex three-dimensional vibration profiles found in real-life applications. This SBIR Phase I project will focus on novel device architectures to achieve a high-power density in a highly compact device volume and to harvest energy efficiently from low-amplitude vibrations along any spatial directions. In addition, new device architectures will be investigated to obtain further improved performance and additional functionalities. Analytical simulations and finite element analysis will be performed to optimize device performance. Prototypes will be fabricated via a proprietary advanced micro manufacturing method to obtain high-quality piezoelectric thin films on silicon wafers. Fabricated harvester prototypes will be tested at conditions simulating target industrial applications. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.