Electrostatic energy harvesting enhancement using variable equivalent permittivity

This Letter exposes an electrostatic-based vibration energy scavenging scheme using a two-layer configuration made of a high permittivity material and a low permittivity layer of variable thickness. Because of the significant change in the permittivity allowed by this process, the capacitance ratio variation is much larger than in the case of a single layer (whatever the permittivity of the latter), therefore allowing an increased efficiency and a significant energy gain, by a typical factor of 50. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.