Energy scavenging device in low temperature co-fired Ceramics

One form of energy scavenging is the conversion of mechanical vibrations to electrical energy. This energy provides a method to power remote devices without batteries or wires. A practical scavenging device must be compact yet produce an output power large enough to be usable. An Energy Scavenging Device (ESD) was designed in Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramics (LTCC) to harness vertical vibrations and transform them into power. Environmental vibrations move a conductive ceramic coil resting on a spring in the device. The coil moves through a magnetic field. The 3-D LTCC energy scavenging device is 90 layers thick with five coils on each layer giving the system 450 densely packed coils. The target application for this device is an airplane wing during flight. A vibrating table with pure sinusoidal motion in the vertical direction was built for testing prototypes. The frequency of vibrations can be varied to simulate this natural environment. Device performance is determined by measuring power output as a function of the oscillation frequency.