A flat high performance micro energy harvester based on a serpentine coil with a single winding

Abstract

We introduce a flat micro energy harvester with a volume of 0.9 cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> and a height of 3 mm. The combination of multiple magnetic circuits enhancing each others flux and one serpentine coil with a single winding and an effective copper filling factor of 100 % enables to maximize the output power. With a first prototype an average power of 12 μW <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">avg</sub> at 1 ms <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-2</sup> was generated. Our approach evidences that high power can be realized even with flat harvesters, although they typically suffer from high mechanically damping.