IoT Thrust Seminar | Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Systems: From Theoretical Modelling to Practical Application

The world is stepping into a new era of the Internet of Things (IoTs). Within the framework of IoTs, billions of physical devices around the world will connect to the Internet, uploading, downloading, and sharing data. If all the billions of IoTs network nodes utilize chemical batteries, the follow-up maintenance and replacement tasks will be definitely strenuous. How to address the power supply issue and guarantee the perpetual operation of those IoTs network nodes is a challenging problem. Vibrations and wind are renewable energy resources that ubiquitously exist in our surrounding environment. Therefore, developing self-powered technology via scavenging energy from the ambient environment has gained enormous attention from the academic and industrial communities. In this talk, I will introduce a number of piezoelectric systems designed by us in the past few years for scavenging energy from vibrations or wind. Problems in practical energy harvesting will be pointed out. The motivation behind each design will be explained. Theoretical models of those electromechanical systems will be used to help elucidate their dynamic mechanisms. At last, I will also present some of our ongoing work to demonstrate how we plan to apply the energy harvesting technology in practical applications.