Capacitive MEMS energy harvesters for structural monitoring: Design and fabrication

The implementation of MEMS energy harvesters as a key enabling technology for self-sustained continuous structural health monitoring has attracted tremendous attention from both academia and industries. This work describes the design and fabrication of vibration energy harvesters using electroplated nickel as the structural layer to allow simple post-CMOS modular device fabrication by avoiding excessive thermal budget. The capacitive transducers were adopted for ease of fabrication and efficient conversion of the ambient vibration into electricity. In addition, some strategies to improve the dynamic performances in terms of the resonance frequency and bandwidth are also presented.