Additive Manufacturing of Flexible Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Using Ceramic-Elastomer Composite

Abstract

As a renewable energy harvesting method, interest in piezoelectric energy harvesting has increased significantly. Despite the piezoelectric energy harvesting technology has been expanded its area to the flexible (elastic, amendable) energy harvesting, striking use or application of the technology is hardly found in the market. In this work, a novel flexible piezoelectric energy harvester was fabricated by an additive manufacturing process, which enables both effective and customized manufacturing of energy harvesting devices. By advantages of additive manufacturing, further application of the piezoelectric energy harvesting technology is highly expected. Particles of BaTiO3, a ceramic with a large piezoelectric constant, were mixed with polyether block amide (PEBA) elastomer to form a flexible piezoelectric composite. The energy harvester was fabricated by printing the piezoelectric composite on a laser-patterned flexible ITOPET substrate, using an additive manufacturing process. Performances of fabricated energy harvester were evaluated by applying a mechanical stress to the energy harvester, voltage and current output were 2 V and 40 nA respectively. An analytical model of the piezoelectric energy harvester was developed, and performance of the energy harvester was discussed with various parameters.