IMMS receives Best Paper Award for MEMS Energy Harvesting Module

Ilmenau, 22.09.2014. On Friday at the ANALOG 2014 conference in Hannover, Germany, IMMS researchers received the Best Paper Award for their article and lecture "A System Architecture for an Integrated Electrostatic MEMS Energy Harvesting Module". This work on the development of miniaturized energy harvesters will establish innovative supply options for self-powered wireless microsensor networks.

The presented topic was part of the the GreenSense research project which started in 2012. GreenSense sees IMMS doing R&D on a modular technological platform in association with the ZMN (Centre for Micro- and Nanotechnology) and the RF and Microwave Research Laboratory at the Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany. The platform is to enable highly complex, self-powered multimodal smart sensor networks to be efficiently constructed and operated. The sensor networks will open up a wide range of applications, particularly in the monitoring and control of industrial production, transport and operational processes, so that those processes become more energy-efficient and less resource-intensive. 

The authors introduced a new system concept for a microelectromechanical energy harvester module which comprises an electrostatic MEMS vibration harvester with two working capacitances oscillating in opposite phases and a high-voltage/low-power CMOS frontend IC with a Lithium microbattery for energy conversion and storage. The module operates with a maximum voltage between the harvester electrodes of up to 40 V. It is specified to deliver a DC voltage of 3.8 V with a continuous output power in the double-digit uW range while consuming less than 1 uW internally. In this contribution we discuss the topology of the harvester frontend and present the architecture of the module.

Lecture:

Benjamin Saft, Eric Schäfer, André Jäger, Stefan Hampl, Bianca Leistritz, Eckhard Hennig: "A System Architecture for an Integrated Electrostatic MEMS Energy Harvesting Module", 14th GMM/ITG Conference „Analogschaltungen im Systemkontext“ (Analog 2014), Hannover, Germany, 18.09.2014.

Further information: http://conference.vde.com/analog2014/