SBIR Phase I: Novel Broadband MEMS Energy Harvesters for Low Frequency Vibration Environments and Applications

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目的重点是当今常见的振动能量转换和收集系统的最关键的限制 其利用悬臂梁换能器，悬臂梁换能器是高频率敏感的并且仅在非常窄的频带上工作，从而限制了能量源的整体效率和利用。该提案的目的是解决 发展的需要 创新的宽带宽、高功率密度振动能量采集器，采用宏微MEMS形式。 这些将通过结构建模、测试和制造概念转换器的证明来进一步优化，这些转换器有效地匹配在真实的生活商业和工业环境中发现的实用、低频、宽带振动源。创新的微MEMS结构将使用新开发的低成本可制造薄膜基线悬臂梁工艺进行原型制作，适用于具有传统和自主部署能力的广泛应用。 在后续和商业化阶段，这些结构将与其他系统组件集成，包括电源管理、无线通信、存储和传感器元件，以实现实际客户应用中的总能量收集系统和自主传感器解决方案。该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是实现自供电或长寿命自主电子和传感器监控系统，将成为未来十年的关键应用领域之一，满足国防、工业、医疗保健和消费应用的功能需求。这些跨越无线传感器网络，远程结构健康监测，不可访问的温度和湿度传感，RFID标签和植入式生物传感器。传感器和CMOS控制和通信电路的尺寸和功耗的减小增加了遥感的扩散，特别是在危险和难以进入的环境中。沿着与电池有关的基本形状因素和有效寿命限制是它们的充电和更换可能是繁琐和昂贵的。尽管进行了大量的学术和工业研究以及产品开发，但由于总的功率效率、形状因数和整个系统的成本，大规模和广泛的商业采用迄今为止非常有限，这些都需要通过改进基本材料特性来解决，高效的传感器设计，采用大批量可扩展和可制造的工艺制造，以及创新的电源管理存储组件，商业系统产品和解决方案。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project focuses on the most critical limitation of today's common vibrational energy conversion and harvesting systems that utilize cantilever transducers , which are highly frequency sensitive and operate only over a very narrow band limiting overall efficiency and utilization of energy source. The goal of this proposal is to address the need of developing innovative wide bandwidth, high power density vibration energy harvesters in both macro and micro MEMS forms. These will be further optimized by structural modeling, testing and fabricating proof of concept transducers that efficiently match practical, low frequency, broadband vibrational sources found in real life commercial and industrial environments. The innovative micro MEMS structures will be prototyped using newly developed low cost manufacturable thin film base line cantilever process suitable for a broad range of applications with conventional and autonomous deployment capability. In subsequent and commercialization phases, these structures will be integrated with other system components including power management, wireless communication, storage, and sensor elements for a total energy harvesting system and autonomous sensor solution in practical customer applications.The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to realize self-powered or long life autonomous electronic and sensor monitoring systems ,emerging as one of the critical application segments in the coming decade addressing functionality needs of defense, industrial, healthcare and consumer applications. These span wireless sensor networks, remote structural health monitoring, inaccessible temperature and humidity sensing, RFID tags, and implantable biosensors. Reduction in the size and power consumption of sensors and CMOS control and communication circuitry has increased proliferation of remote sensing especially in hazardous and inaccessible environments. Along with the fundamental form factor and active life limitation concern with batteries is their charging and replacement can be tedious and expensive. In spite of large academic and industrial research and product development the large scale and broad based commercial adoption is very limited to date due to over all power efficiency, form factor and cost of the total system that need to be addressed through improvements in fundamental material characteristics, efficient transducer designs fabricated with high volume scalable and manufacturable process and innovative power management storage components for total commercial system products and solutions.