Energy Harvesting from Vibrations
Harvesting energy from “waste” vibration present in the environment has seen an increasing interest during the past years as part of the general heightened awareness for alternative energy sources. Beside of typical electro mechanical methods, ferro electric devices have proven to be very effective to harvest energy for low power devices as often found in portable electronics, sensor controlled and condition monitoring systems due to the wide usable frequency range and adaptability.
Unused power exists in various forms such as machine vibration, flowing water, wind, human motion and shock waves. In recent years, industrial and academic research units have focused their attention on harvesting energy from vibrations using piezoelectric transducers. However, because the conventional device configuration was mostly a “bi- or trimorph” design working in resonance settings, the efforts clarified three main problems associated with piezoelectric transducers:
The development of piezoelectric composite 
material, like the MFC, helped to overcome some of the limitation of the monolithic piezo ceramic components, especially brittleness, lack of reliability and conformability. The recent advance in ultra low power electronic components has made a new type of electronic devices possible:
battery free, autonomous devices functioning solely on harvesting mechanical vibrations with piezoelectric components.
Battery free, autonomous devices
Complete battery free devices based on piezo electric harvesters are a reality today. Complete electronic devices with a power consumption of < 10mWs can be manufactured cost effectively. 
With a connected storage for excess energy, like a super cap or thin film battery, higher burst consumption, as normally required for RF telemetry, can be accomodated as well. Energy Harvester based on the MFC do have a life time of more than 20 years, which is necessary to compete with battery based devices.
The design of piezo electric vibration harvester is not an easy task. It requires knowledge and skills in mechanics, piezo ceramics and electronics to design systems which are cost effective and highly efficient.
Smart Material is actively involved in the research and development of vibration energy harvester. We have developed the P2 type MFC- line mostly as an optimized version for energy harvesting applications. The MFCs item number M8528P2, M8557P2 and M8585P2 are the preferred components used in many energy harvesting applications.
Smart Material is also presenting its research and results at many of the leading conferences dedicated to the growing energy harvesting applications.
You will find additional publications and some of our recent conference presentations under the Publicationsection on this website.
Smart Material has developed a series of evaluation kits and electronic and harvester components to help customers studying this interesting field, for rapid prototyping and the development of energy harvesting application based on the MFC product line.
Applications for MFC vibration harvester
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Smart Energy Harvesting Evaluation Kit
This development kit consists of a simple desktop shaker with a suitable power amplifier unit, several MFC generator structures and 3 electronic modules with different harvesting and conditioning circuits. It enables scientists with mechanical and electrical engineering background to study the relations between mechanical input parameters and electrical outputs. The excitation for the harvester can be applied either using an internal sine wave generator or alternatively, a sampled signal from a real environment supplied to the 0dB external source input.
Specifications:
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AmbioMote Wireless Energy Harvester Kit
The AmbioMote24 combines highly efficient energy conversion and storage, a high-speed wireless interface and user sensor interfaces with intelligent power management algorithms that maximize energy delivery from the energy harvester. This development kit allows easy test of a wireless energy harvesting setup, using a P2 type MFC to harvest energy for relaying sensor based data to a remote receiver. The kit comes with several AmbioMotes, sensors and a USB interface. Configuration and visualization software is included with the kit. The kit includes a MFC M8528P2 harvester.
Kit content:
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Simple LED Cantilever Demonstrator
A simple energy harvester demonstrator comprised of a glass fiber beam and two M8528P2 MFC for harvesting energy from shaking the unit. The demonstrator has an integrated recitifier with three LEDs, which will light up one by one depending on the frequency and the amount of acceleration someone can induce by shaking the unit.
The demonstrator is great for educational use or simply showing how much energy can be generated by simply shaking a beam.
Specifications:
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MFC energy harvester M8528P2, M8557P2 and M8585P2
The P2-type and P3-type MFCs were especially designed for energy harvesting applications. These types of MFCs feature a high electric source capacitance, low output voltage and increased electric charge generation, which make these types of MFCs well suited for vibration harvesting applications. The MFC item numbers M8528P2, M8557P2 and M8585P2 are standard inventory types.
In comparison to other piezo ceramic harvester devices the standard MFCs are delivered unattached to a structure or cantilever. This allows the attachment to vibration nodes of existing structures and is one of the important features of using the flexible MFC for energy harvesting applications. It also allowins for the design of non-resonant harvester. You will find bonding instructions in the Datasheet or Support section.
Typical energy output if attached to a cantilever, at 1G acceleration, 10Hz and 800ppm strain, energy accumulated for 30 sec:
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MFC Cantilevers and Composite Benders for Energy Harvesting applications
Smart Material also provides assembled cantilevers for energy harvesting applications requiring a standard resonant design or for rapid prototyping. Using our inhouse capabilities of manufacturing various glass fiber and carbon fiber composites we are providing custom tailored devices to meet your specifications for a particular resonance frequency and required energy.
Please contact us with your specific design requirements. Please check out our Engineering section for energy harvesting applications and for further information.
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Advanced Linear Devices EH300/EH301
THe EH300/EH301 Series EH Modules can accept energy from
many types of electrical energy sources and store this energy to
power conventional 3.3V and 5.0V electrical circuits EH300/EH301 Series Modules are completely selfpowered
and always in the active mode. They can function with
instantaneous input voltages ranging from 0.0V to +/-500V AC
or DC, and input currents from 200nA to 400mA. Harvested energy
can be collected from sources that produce electrical energy
in either a steady or an intermittent and irregular manner with
varying source impedances.
Specifications:
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Smart Material Conditioner CL-50
A energy harvester conditioner specifically designed for the MFC P2 type products. The CL-50 is the first of a line of Conditioner products designed to match the impedance, output voltage range and harvested energy (electric charge) of the MFC P2 type family for maximum efficiency.
Specifications:
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EH-Link™ Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Node
The EH-Link™ from Microstrain wireless node is a self powered sensor, harvesting energy from ambient energy sources. EH-Link™ is compatible with a wide range of generator types, including the P2 type MFC , electrodynamic generators and thermoelectric generators. Sophisticated energy conversion and conservation methods allow the EH-Link™ to operate with a fraction of the power normally required for a wireless sensor node. The EH-Link™ wireless sensor node is versatile and is designed to operate as part of MicroStrain's 802.15.4 wireless sensor network. Each node in the wireless network is assigned a unique 16 bit address. The EH-Link™ Pioneer Kit, MicroStrain part number 6320-0041 includes 1 EH-Link™ wireless sensor node, 1 solar demo harvester and 1 TEG demo harvester, enabling users to set up an Energy Harvesting demo in minutes.
Specifications:
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