Xiaotong Gao, Wei-Heng Shih, and Wan Y. Shih’s latest paper, titled “Vibration energy harvesting using piezoelectric unimorph cantilevers with unequal piezoelectric and nonpiezoelectric lengths,” has been published online in Applied Physics Letters.
From the abstract: “We have examined a piezoelectric unimorph cantilever PUC with unequal piezoelectric and nonpiezoelectric lengths for vibration energy harvesting theoretically by extending the analysis of a PUC with equal piezoelectric and nonpiezoelectric lengths. The theoretical approach was validated by experiments. A case study showed that for a fixed vibration frequency, the maximum open-circuit induced voltage which was important for charge storage for later use occurred with a PUC that had a nonpiezoelectric-to-piezoelectric length ratio greater than unity, whereas the maximum power when the PUC was connected to a resistor for immediate power consumption occurred at a unity nonpiezoelectric-to-piezoelectric length ratio.”
The paper can be viewed directly here. [View PDF]
