Distributed energy harvesting of ZnO nano-shells

Distributed nanopiezoelectric energy harvesting mechanism of ZnO piezoelectric nanorings laminated with distributed electrode segments is analyzed and evaluated in this study. Different from voltage generation mechanism of elastic rings laminated with piezoelectric sensor patches evaluated before, only the membrane strain contributes to the signal and energy generations of the ZnO nanorings. In case studies, voltage signal and generated energy distributions with different segment sizes and nanoring radii are evaluated and analyzed. The fact that the generated signals and energies can be averaged and cancelled out on the electrode segments reduces the total signal and energy. Thus, the total energy generation reduces to zero in the Δψ=30° case with mode number n=6 due to signal cancellations. Based on these analyses and results, optimal distributions of electrode patches to finally achieve highest energy harvesting efficiency for practical applications are also proposed.