Self-suspended vibration-driven energy harvesting chip for power density maximization

� 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd. This work introduces a new concept to integrate energy-harvesting devices with the aim of improving their throughput, mainly in terms of scavenged energy density and frequency tunability. This concept, named energy harvester in package (EHiP), is focused on the heterogeneous integration of a MEMS die, dedicated to scavenging energy, with an auxiliary chip, which can include the control and power management circuitry, sensors and RF transmission capabilities. The main advantages are that the whole die can be used as an inertial mass and the chip area usage is optimized. Based on this concept, in this paper we describe the development and characterization of a MEMS die fully dedicated to harvesting mechanical energy from ambient vibrations through an electrostatic transduction. A test PCB has been fabricated to perform the assembly that allows measurement of the resonance motion of the whole system at 289 Hz. An estimated maximum generated power of around 11 μW has been obtained for an input vibration acceleration of ∼10 m s-2 when the energy harvester operates in a constant-charge cycle for the best-case scenario. Therefore, a maximum scavenged power density of 0.85 mW cm-3 is theoretically expected for the assembled system. These results demonstrate that the generated power density of any vibration-based energy harvester can be significantly increased by applying the EHiP concept, which could become an industrial standard for manufacturing this kind of system, independently of the transduction type, fabrication technology or application.