Study of the wideband behavior of an in-plane electromagnetic MEMS energy harvester

A in-plane wideband MEMS electromagnetic energy harvester (EM-EH) has been developed by incorporating nonlinear suspension structures and mechanical stoppers. To study the effect and advantage of mechanical stoppers and nonlinear suspensions on the wideband behavior, three prototypes of EM-EH devices have been developed. It is found that prototype I with two-side nonlinear suspensions h as a strong hardening effect and subsequently a large resonance shift while at the cost of a short operating bandwidth. Without the nonlinear suspension in prototype III, a wider bandwidth can be achieved by the effect of only the mechanical stoppers.