Enhanced energy harvesting performance of the piezoelectric unimorph with perpendicular electrodes

In this paper, we presented a combined piezoelectric effect between perpendicular faces of the piezoelectric unimorph with polarization along the thickness direction, which was decomposed into shear and transverse piezoelectric effects in analytical model. Nine types of output electrode configurations based on perpendicular electrodes were designed for the combined piezoelectric effect. In the prototype, compared with traditional transverse piezoelectric effect, the superimposed piezoelectric effect can produce 1.5 times open circuit voltage and 3.9 times power for energy harvesting.