Performance Evaluation of Capacitive Accelerometer Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Using GaAs Material

A novel method of obtaining energy from natural sources is MEMS (Micro-Electro Mechanical System) energy harvesting.Being a renewable, nearly endless energy source, it has a lot of potential for wireless sensor applications.A micro energy harvester is a crucial part of the self-sustaining integrated micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and microelectronics that will be widely used in the upcoming Internet of Things (IoT) era, or the so-called trillion sensors.GaAs is used in the capacitive accelerometer's design, and the specs are listed below.In this piece.The proof mass of the capacitive accelerometer is 0.5 microns, and its thickness is 2 microns.The distance between its springs is 1 micron, and their overlap is 120 microns.The relationship between acceleration and the sense voltage for various materials namely Si, ZnO, GaAs, Ge has been simulated using COMSOL software.The results show that GaAs give the better performance when compared with the other materials.The acceleration and the total energy are obtained which is shown in the graph.The acceleration is adjusted, and the related capacitance for various materials is examined in order to assess the behaviour of energy harvesting.Hence with different analysis it is identified that GaAs is well suited for applications where a low cost microsensors is required.Thus the work shows that GaAs is the better choice for energy harvesting.