Demonstration of Non-Contact Type Vibrational Energy Harvester with Electric Double Layer Electrets

This paper reports demonstration results of a non-contact type vibration energy harvester (VEH) with electric double layer (EDL) electrets. The surface potential of EDL electrets is, for the first time, utilized to generate induced electrical currents by input vibration. A proof-of-concept in-plane VEH is designed and developed by precision machining processes. The average surface potential of the developed EDL electret is experimentally obtained to be about −2 V. The VEH evaluation results successfully demonstrate the proposed non-contact type power generation, where we confirm a typical output current of about 40 nA (peak-to-peak) with the load resistance of 1 MΩ at the input acceleration of 1 G (1 G = 9.8 m/s2) with the frequency of 155 Hz. The proposed power generation mechanism would contribute to expanding the usage environment of VEHs with EDL electrets.