A high-performance micro electret power generator based on microball bearings

In this paper, a high-performance micro electret power generator fabricated by simple bulk micromachining technology is presented. It has microballs as movable bearings for harvesting changing low-frequency vibration energy from the environment. The silicon V-grooves where the microballs slide have very smooth (1 1 1) planes, and so the device is sensitive to very slight vibration and almost has no resonant frequency. A plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition SiO₂/Si₃N₄ double layer was used as the electret. The device was fabricated by simple micromachining technology suitable for mass production except for microball assembly. The influence of various frequencies and accelerations on the performance was studied in detail. The measurement results of this electret micro power generator show that the optimal load is proportional to the frequency, and inversely proportional to the acceleration. The peak-to-peak output charge and output power were 72 nC and 5.9 µW respectively at 20 Hz and 0.7 g with the optimal resistive load 626 kΩ. The work frequencies range from 100 Hz to a lower frequency (1 Hz). 112 nW can still be obtained in the minimum acceleration of 0.05 g at 10 Hz with the optimal resistive load, indicating that this device has high sensitivity. The possible application of our device in scavenging energy from low-frequency irregular movements, such as human motion, was proved by a primary experiment