A study of variation in output power of piezoelectric mems EH with change in temperature

Ongoing research has made possible for electronic devices to operate only at a few micro-watts. Hence we have a possibility of making self-sustainable devices, if only some mechanism can be developed to generate the power within these devices. Piezoelectric mems are one of such devices that harvest energy from ambient vibrations and the energy harvested from these are quite sufficient for sustaining various electronic devices for a very long time. Hence they are capable of replacing the batteries. But before that we need to ensure that these Energy Harvesters (EH) are completely reliable. There are various factors that can affect the power generated by these devices. Also the power generated by these devices is very less hence a very small change in power can create performance issues. Therefore these parameters and their effect in output power should be studied very carefully. In this work the analysis of the variation in output power of a piezoelectric mems energy harvester (having an active area of just 0.6mm2 and an effective volume of 3.69×10-11 m3) is done with change in temperature using a non - linear modeling. This modeling of the effect of temperature determines the extent of sensitivity of the device. The materials used in this work for analysis is PZT - 5H. The results shows that with increase in temperature from -15 degree Celsius to 60 degree Celsius there is an approximate 16 % decrease in the peak output power.