Electret transducer for vibration-based energy harvesting

Vibration-based electret energy harvesters with soft cellular spacer rings are presented. These harvesters are closely related to recently introduced electret accelerometers; however, their development targets are partially differing. Various harvesters with seismic masses from 8 to 23 g and surface potentials in the 500 V regime were built and characterized and powers of up to 8 μW at about 2 kHz and an acceleration of 1 g were measured. An analytical model is presented which, for instance, allows the calculation of the frequency response of the power output into a given load resistance. Finally, experimental and calculated results are compared.