Electrostatic vibration energy harvester with combined effect of electrical nonlinearities and mechanical impact

This paper presents an advanced study including the design, characterization and theoretical\r analysis of a capacitive vibration energy harvester. Although based on a resonant electromechanical\r device, it is intended for operation in a wide frequency band due to the combination of stop-end\r effects and a strong biasing electrical field. The electrostatic transducer has an interdigited comb\r geometry with in-plane motion, and is obtained through a simple batch process using two masks. A\r continuous conditioning circuit is used for the characterization of the transducer. A nonlinear\r model of the coupled system ?transduce-conditioning circuit? is presented and analyzed employing two\r different semi-analytical techniques together with precise numerical modelling. Experimental results\r are in good agreement with results obtained from numerical modelling. With the 1 g amplitude of\r harmonic external acceleration at atmospheric pressure, the system transducer-conditioning circuit\r has a half-power bandwidth of more than 30% and converts more than 2??W of the power of input\r mechanical vibrations over the range of 140 and 160?Hz. The harvester has also been characterized\r under stochastic noise-like input vibrations.