A Short Review of Piezoelectricity-based Vibration and Acoustic Energies Harvesting

摘要

The majority of us have been familiar with usage of ambient renewable energies including solar, wind, Thermal and biochemical energies to generate electricity. However, our environment is still full of wasted energies. Vibration [1] and acoustic energies [2] are two of the currently wasted energies. Vibration and acoustic energies are clean and renewable. But unfortunately, output power of vibration and acoustic energies are lower than solar and wind energies. This becomes a main issue for wide practical application of vibration and acoustic energies harvesting. However, vibration and acoustic energies exhibit several special advantages than solar and wind energies. Firstly, harvesting vibration and acoustic energies is not limited by weather and time. Vibration energy largely exists in motions from vehicle and airplane, human body, operating machine, etc. And, acoustic energy can be easily found in noise from traffics, airplane engine, stadium, etc. Ubiquity of vibration and acoustic energies will provide a great number of opportunities to allow us to utilize vibration and acoustic energies. Most importantly, storage of vibration and acoustic energies over a period of time may be significant. This short review aims to illustrate piezoelectricity-based vibration energy harvesting, acoustic energy harvesting, and the related AC/DC circuit design.