Design, Fabrication and test of integrated micro-scale vibration based electromagnetic generator

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Description/Abstract

This paper discusses the design, fabrication and testing of electromagnetic microgenerators. Three different designs of power generators are partially microfabricated and assembled. Prototype A having a wire-wound copper coil, Prototype B, an electrodeposited copper coil both on a Deep Reactive Ion etched (DRIE) silicon, beam and paddle. Prototype C uses moving NdFeB magnets in between two microfabricated coils. The integrated coil, paddle and beam were fabricated using standard micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) processing techniques. For Prototype A, the maximum measured power output was 148 nW at 8.08 kHz resonant frequency and 3.9 m/s2 acceleration. For prototype B, the microgenerator gave a maximum load power of 23 nW for an acceleration of 9.8 m/s2, at a resonant frequency of 9.83 kHz. This is a substantial improvement in power generated over other microfabricated silicon based generators reported in literature. This generator has a volume of 0.1 cm3 which is lowest of all the silicon based microfabricated electromagnetic power generators reported. To verify the potential of integrated coils in electromagnetic generators, Prototype C was assembled. This generated a maximum load power of 58