A metamaterial for wearable piezoelectric energy harvester

In this study, a metamaterial is developed and manufactured by additive manufacturing technique for a novel wearable piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH). This PEH converts electricity from the kinetic energy associated with walking by attached polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membranes. Finite element method analysis was conducted to simulate the dynamic compression on insoles corresponding to actual walking or running. The simulation results were verified by experiments. It was found that a triple-layer PVDF structure can produce an output voltage of 4.15 V and one insole with a triple-layer PVDF structure array can provide an 8.6 mW output power at running.