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Dr. Jun Nakano and Prof. Yuji Suzuki wins a Best Paper Award at PowerMEMS 2015

 

On 2Th December 2015, Dr. Jun Nakano and Prof. Yuji Suzuki, Department of Mechanical Engineering, wins a Best Paper Award at The 15th International Conference on Micro and Nanotechnology for Power Generation and Energy Conversion Applications (PowerMEMS 2015). This award was Only one award out of 170 submitted papers.

 

 

< About awarded research >

Recently, vibration energy harvesting attaracts much attention for its use in powering wearable devices without batteries. Although electromagnetic/piezoelectric rotational generators, which are compatible with human motion, were develped in previous studies, they suffered from low conversion efficiency.
In the present study, we used polymer electret, which is fluorinated polymer with implanted charges, and prototyped a rotational generator that can provide relatively high output power with a simple structure using MEMS technologies.

 

 

< Comments >

The device developed in this study is still an early prototype. We believe that our paper was awarded due to the use of electret for the applications in wearable devices and due to great expactations  for its commercialization. This award has encouraged us to pay further research efforts for developing future products through the industry-academia partnership.