Development of a pyroelectric micro heat engine for energy harvesting

Thermal energy harvesting through pyroelectric micro heat engine takes full benefit of micro systems technology, to cycle temperature in an embedded pyroelectric material, and to convert thermal energy from low grade waste heat to electrical energy. Use of micro scale heat engines for pyroelectric energy harvesting improves performance, efficiency, and also overcomes previous plaguing problems at pyroelectric energy conversion. The ultimate purpose of this project is to modify a micro heat engine which designed, fabricated, and modeled by Ravindran et al. A good accordance between the simulations and experiments was observed and conclusions show that there is an area for development of this heat engine. An example is modification of the pyroelectric generators (PEGs) part of the heat engine using pyroelectric material with high pyroelectric coefficient and low dielectric constant and optimizing the thickness of the PEGs.

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