Design, Fabrication and Performance Evaluation of Flexible Piezoelectric Biomechanical Energy Harvester
Implementing Organization
Malaviya National Institute of Technology
Principal Investigator
Dr. Ritu Sharma
Malaviya National Institute of Technology
CO-Principal Investigator
Dr. C Periasamy
Malaviya National Institute of Technology
About
The energy generated in the physiological body activities including chemical (eg., glucose oxidation ), thermal (eg., body heat), and mechanical (vibration of organs, contraction/ relaxation of muscles, heart-beats, blood circulation) are generally gets wasted. The main purpose of this project is to develop the piezoelectric type of flexible energy harvester that can be implemented for biomechanical energy harvesting (BEH) which means the capturing of energy from the physiological body activities and converting them into some useful form like electrical signals which in-turn used for the energy generation. This is achieved by exploiting the inheritance property of piezoelectric energy harvesters to convert mechanical energy into electric energy. The primary requirement of biomechanical piezoelectric energy harvester is high flexibility, human body compatibility, and cost effectiveness. To design such type of biomechanical energy harvester flexible substrates (PET, PMN-PT, PDMS) along with the polymer, single crystal, ceramic based piezoelectric materials (ZnO nanowire, PVDF, PVDF-TrFE) can be used.