Air-spaced PDMS piezo-electret cantilevers for vibration energy harvesting

This paper reports a design of a new prototype of air-spaced cantilevers made from a micro-structured PDMS piezo-electret material for accelerometer and energy harvesting applications. The test performed on these cantilevers in a sensor mode exhibits a stable sensitivity of 385 mV/g for a frequency ranging from 5 Hz to 200 Hz that encompass most macro-scale vibrations. In the energy harvesting mode, the cantilever generates a power of 103 nW with a load resistance of 217 MΩ.