Abstract
This work discusses and analyzes in detail the operation of some structures of electrostatic generators that can be used for energy harvesting from mechanical vibrations or rotating movement, that do not require any active control circuit for their operation. The structures use an unstable generator based on Bennet’s doubler to bias another similar generator, or just to bias one or two variable capacitors, which form the main generator. Their action is similar to electric generators based on electrets, but they are purely based on variable capacitances. Theoretical analyses and experimental results are presented.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Torres, J.-M., & Dhariwal, R. S. (1999). Electric field breakdown at micrometre separations. Nanotechnology, 10(1), 102–107.
Yen, B., & Lang, J. (2006). A variable-capacitance vibration-to-electric energy harvester. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I, 53(2), 288–295.
Edamoto, M., Suzuki, Y., Kasagi, N., Kashiwagi, K., Morizawa, Y., Yokoyama, T., et al. (2009). Low-resonant-frequency micro electret generator for energy harvesting application. IEEE 22nd International Conference on Microelectromechanical Systems (pp. 1059–1062). Sorrento, Italy.
de Queiroz, A. C. M. (2010). Electrostatic vibrational energy harvesting using a variation of Bennet’s doubler. 2010 53rd IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (pp. 404–407). Seattle, USA.
de Queiroz, A. C. M., & Domingues, M. (2011). The doubler of electricity used as a battery charger. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, 58(12), 787–801.
Bennet, A. (1787). An account of a doubler of electricity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 77(2), 288–296.
de Queiroz, A. C. M. (2014). Electrostatic energy harvesting without active control circuits. 2014 IEEE Latin American Symposium on Circuits and Systems (pp. 1–4). Santiago, Chile.
Le May,D. B., Drexel, C. (1963). Electrostatic generator. U. S. patent 3094653.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
de Queiroz, A.C.M. Electrostatic energy harvesting using capacitive generators without control circuits. Analog Integr Circ Sig Process 85, 57–64 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-015-0577-0
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-015-0577-0