MEMS/NEMS-enabled energy harvesters as self-powered sensors

Abstract

Chapter 1 reviews the recent progress in kinetic MEMS/NEMS-enabled energy harvesters as self-powered sensors. Recent advances and challenges in MEMS/NEMS-enabled self-sustained sensor working mechanisms including electromagnetic, piezoelectric, electrostatic, triboelectric, and magnetostrictive are reviewed and discussed. Recent advances in Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor networks reveal new insight into the understanding of traditional power sources with the new characteristics of mobility, sustainability, and availability. Individually, the power consumption of each sensor unit is low; however, the number of units deployed is huge. As predicted by Cisco, trillions of sensors will be distributed on the earth by 2020. Conventional technologies which employ batteries to supply power may not be the choice. Energy harvesting systems as self-sustained power sources are capable of capturing and transforming unused ambient energy into the electrical energy. Intensive efforts during the last two decades toward the development of micro-/nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS)-enabled energy harvesting technologies have yield breakthroughs in self-powered sensor evolutions.