Photonically Sintered PZT Energy Harvester

Abstract

This paper reports an Aerosol-Jet printed micro scale Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) energy harvester directly sintered on a low melting point substrate in less than 1 msec using photonic sintering technology. To improve the output signal, d33 piezoelectric mode was employed by patterning silver electrodes as an interdigitated structure on top of a PZT film. The size of the device is 15.5 mm × 13.5 mm × 0.2 mm. Up to 2.4 V was measured at 145 MPa tensile bending stress level in the device after poling at 180 °C for 2 hours with an electric field of 30 kV/cm. Using an oscillating stress (∼2.5 Hz) of approximately 145 MPa, the power as a function of load was determined by connecting the device with various series resistive loads. A maximal power of 0.1 μW was generated when driving into a 10 MΩ load. A PZT energy harvester, for the first time, is demonstrated which has been directly printed and sintered on a low melting temperature flexible substrate without a film transfer processes. This not only dramatically simplifies the fabrication process, but expands the possible substrate materials for PZT energy harvesters.