Flexible Piezo Transducers

Hello everyone, I am currently the new kid on the block.

I don't have much time for a proper introduction (I've got more than enough essays to write at this moment)
but this topic has been on my mind for the past couple of days, so i was hoping i could have it debunked or better yet improved.

So I ran into a article on harvesting electricity from a beating heart with a piezo transducer to power a pacemaker.
This got me wondering if it would be possible to implant small strips of piezo transducers along the back side of my fingers (or something similar) and have them connected to a charging module somewhere in the wrist, and use it to enable other implants to be self-sustainable.

I haven't done too much research on piezoelectricity but I'm curious if something like this would work.
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  • Hello there,

    I am new here too and as far as I saw from the posts that I've been seeing here charging things is a quite a problem yet. The size of the implants get kind of big due to the size of even the smallest inductive chargers around plus the battery.

    I've seen some questions about inductive chargers generating heat and compromising the implant too, but seems that they concluded that there was no problem.

    As for piezos they are a great idea, but we are still stuck into ceramics which are fragile and a bad idea to stuff under skin. 

    This flexible one you spoke of is just a great leap, but I also found some other things like "triboeletrics" http://www.nanoscience.gatech.edu/paper/2012/12_NE_04.pdf.
    There is also more stuff here:

    So with all that in mind I'd say this project of yours could also get something with this bi-directional flex sensor as a kind of what you are looking for, though I can not say the amount of energy it will produce I can deduce that if it generate signals, this signals (energy) could be harvested. I am not really sure the amount of power it would produce and how to harvest it though.

    Hope it gives you some room to start.


  • Harvesting energy with piezos from movement is possible, depending on what you do it's even very easy and cheap. Energy output is tiny. Try it for yourself, clip any tiny piezo speaker into a strip. attach a small weight on one end, wiggle it around. Enough to make an LED flash up for a fraction of a second but that's it.
    Main limitation is set by physics where energy equals force * distance. Your distances will typically be within less than 1mm, the forces probably not above 0.2N, gives you about 0.0002J per actuation cycle at max. If you are a really fast hand-waver you may get that 5 times per second. Chances are you won't get much more than 1mW. Even the most simple inductive charging from just an LC combination will easily get you 10 to 50 times the output power (without waving your arm like crazy).

  • Thanks for the input

    This is what I had in mind:
    http://www.piceramic.com/products/duraact-piezoelectric-transducer.html

    But I suspect that this doesn't change the output situation.

    When I have some more free time I'll do more research.
  • So i was just looking around for more ideas and i found this:
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140410131458.htm
    How "easy" would something like this be to replicate? and how expensive?
  • thermoelectric generators are readily available. but they work based on a temperature difference, something you don't really have inside the body (not unless you are a penguin standing on ice). The quoted energy output of 40mW for 100cm² and 16K temperature difference would render it unusable due to sheer size and low output power. A solar panel of that size would give you far better results.
    Long story short: thermoelectric generators work only on the skin, not inside. And even on the skin, they require rather chill temperatures to produce noticeable output power
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