A Shear-Mode Magnetoelectric Heterostructure with Enhanced Magnetoelectric Response for Stray Power-Frequency Magnetic Field Energy Harvesting

This paper devises a magnetoelectric (ME) heterostructure to harvest ambient stray power-frequency (50 Hz or 60 Hz) magnetic field energy. The device explores the shear piezoelectric effect of the PZT-5A plates and the magnetostrictive activity of the Terfenol-D plates. The utilization of the high-permeability films helps to enhance the magnetoelectric response to the applied alternating magnetic field. A theoretical model is developed based on the piezomagnetic and piezoelectric constitutive equations as well as the boundary conditions. The ME response of the device is characterized theoretically and experimentally. The measured ME voltage coefficient attains 165.2 mV/Oe at the frequency of 50 Hz, which shows a good agreement with the theoretical result. The feasibility for extracting energy from the 50 Hz magnetic field is validated. Under an external alternating magnetic field of 30 Oe, a maximum power of 8.69 μW is generated across an optimal load resistance of 693 kΩ. Improvements of the ME heterostructure are practicable, which allows an enhancement of the ME voltage coefficient and the maximum power by optimizing the structural parameters and utilizing PMN-PT with a higher shear-mode piezoelectric voltage coefficient (g(15)).