Energy Harvesting & Recapture from Human Subjects: Dual-Stage MEMS Cantilever Energy Harvester

Recent thermal energy harvesting research has advanced alternative non-Seebeck devices and shifted attention towards applications with low temperature differentials near ambient. This research effort takes a simulation-based approach to improve the performance of a modified dual-stage MEMS cantilever energy harvester. The device employs a bimetal and a piezoelectric transducer to harvest energy from a 10° C temperature differential. The proposed application for the device is as a wearable energy harvester, capable of generating power from the human body using skin temperature (average 33° C) as the hot side and ambient air (23° C) as the cold side. A bimetal thickness scaling study is conducted, in which the 1.5 micrometers thickness yields the maximum electrical power output of 36.82 nW per device. This translates to a power density of 5.68 mW/cm2, which surpasses the performance of many Seebeck and non-Seebeck designs from the literature