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Procedia Engineering 87 (2014) 1521 1524

EUROSENSORS 2014, the XXVIII edition of the conference series

Piezoelectric Transformers for Ultra-low Voltage

Energy Harvesting Applications
Antonio Camarda*, Aldo Romani, Marco Tartagni

Department of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering - University of Bologna, Via Venezia 52, Cesena 47521, Italy

Abstract
This work shows the possibility to exploit piezoelectric transformers (PTs) for implementing step-up oscillators for ultra-low
DC voltage energy harvesting (EH) applications. Oscillation is achieved by coupling a common source stage made up of nchannel JFETs with a piezoelectric transformer acting like a high gain notch filter. A voltage doubler is used to store energy in a
capacitor. A mathematical model of the whole system is developed and matches experimental measurements. The minimum
activation voltage is 73 mV. This value decreases if higher mechanical quality factors of piezoelectric transformers are provided
along with a corresponding design of the input stage.
Keywords: Energy Harvesting, Piezoelectric Transformers, Step-up oscillator.

1. Introduction
Step-up oscillators, suitable for systems kick-start (Fig. (1a)), activating with DC voltages of few tens mV
exploiting magnetic transformers (MTs) coupled with depletion-mode or junction FETs have been used to harvest
energy from low voltage sources such as TEGs and to store energy in a battery or in a capacitor [1,2,3]. However,
magnetic components are usually not easily miniaturized and suffer from core saturation and losses. Mechanical
resonators, instead, can be integrated via MEMS based implementations and have much higher quality factors [4].
Up to now, piezoelectric transformers (PTs) have been widely used in high-voltage applications such as inverters
for LCD backlight, or for ultra-compact mobile battery chargers [5]. For the first time, we report a step-up oscillator
circuit based on a PT suitable for ultra-low voltage Enegy Harvesting (EH) applications. We also propose an
analytical model of the system based on equivalent electromechanical circuits that validates the followed approach.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: + 39 0547 339537; fax: +39 0547 339208.

E-mail address: antonio.camarda@unibo.it (A. Camarda)

1877-7058 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of Eurosensors 2014
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2014.11.588

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2. Piezoelectric Transformers
PTs are resonant devices that exploit the directt and inverse piezoelectric effect of specific ceramic materiials.
Generally, PTs have a distributed network as equiivalent circuit, but when driven at a frequency near one of their
t
mechanical resonances, a lumped equivalent circuitt [6] can be used to describe their operation.
Fig. 1b shows the equivalent electromechanical circuit of a PT driven at a resonant frequency together withh the
system architecture: Cd1 is the input electrical capaacitance (tens of nF), and generally is the highest capacitancee for
multi-layer transformers; the capacitance CM is reelated to the Youngs modulus, the resistor RM is related to the
mechanical quality factor Q of the device (typicallyy Q>500 for commercial PTs ), the inductor LM accounts forr the
vibrating mass; N is the equivalent turn ratio of thee ideal magnetic transformer and is related to the force ratio from
fr
input to output; Cd2 is the electrical output capacitaance, and is usually much lower than Cd1, typically few pF in cmsized devices, since the distance between the electroodes is generally higher.

Fig. 1: (a) System kick-start. A conventional power converteer cannot start operating with input voltages lower than the devices thresshold
voltage. A start-up oscillator can be used to pump low voltagess to sufficiently high levels suitable to control the power devices. Once the main
m
converter has been turned on, it can efficiently perform power cconversion. The primary target of a step-up oscillator is the lowest possibile starts
up voltage and not necessarily the efficiency. (b): Circuit schem
matic. A very high resistance RF (> 140M) is introduced to avoid turn-on oof the
gate to source pn junction, that would cause the loss of the transiistor effect.

The PT used in our experiment is the SMMTF555P4S80 by Steiner & Martins Piezo and was characterized w
with
the admittance circle method.
3. Behavior of the system
The schematic of the circuit is reported in Fig. 1b. The whole system can be divided into four blocks: the low
voltage energy source VIN with its series resistance RS, a common source stage made up of n amplifier JFETs (JJ201
from Fairchild Semiconductors) and m load JFET
Ts, the PT, a voltage doubler composed of a pump capaccitor
CPUMP = 470pF, BAS70 Schottky diodes, and a storaage capacitor of 4.7F.
The PT voltage transfer function is shown in (1):
AVPT s

VB
VA

N s2,el

C eq / COUT , N

s s , el / Qel s s , el
2

(
(1)

where s,el=(LMCeq)-1 is the electric resonance pulsattion, COUT,N=NCOUT, Ceq=CMCOUT,N/(CM+COUT,N) (0.96C

CM),
and COUT=Cd2+CG+2CD is the overall small signal ccapacitance seen at the PT output, being CG the load effect off the
JFET J1 and the capacitance CD associated to thhe diodes of the voltage doubler. The device behaves likee an
extremely high Q second order system: in the viciinity of the resonance (where the phase shift is 90 degrees), the
phase has a very steep slope. As stated before, PTs have very high quality factors compared to MTs. This means that

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Antonio Camarda et al. / Procedia Engineering 87 (2014) 1521 1524

the electric resonance is nearly the frequency where the input admittance is at its maximum and it is real.
Furthermore, as their equivalent lumped model is similar to that of quartz crystals the antiresonance frequency fp (2)
is almost equal to the frequency where the input admittance is real and where it is at its minimum:

f p 2 LM Ceq Cd 1

2 LM Ceq 2

(2)

At fp the phase shift introduced by the PT is practically 180 degrees and this shift sums up with that introduced
by the common source stage to give the 360 degrees around the loop required by the Barkhausen phase criterion. If
also the Barkhausen gain criterion is satisifed, an oscillation could be triggered if the loop is unstable. Being more
precise, since (1) gives 180 degrees of phase shift at f, at f = fp this shift will be 180 , where degrees are
given by the input PT admittance combined with the real output differential resistance of the common source. By
simulations, generally <4. It should be noted that (2) gives the oscillation frequency at the beginning of the
oscillation, but since PTs behavior is load dependent, as the oscillation amplitude increases, the load seen at PTs
output port changes, thus in steady-state the oscillation frequency is slightly different from that calculated by (2).
The current of a JFET, in deep triode region, is given by the following equation:

I D 2 VP VGS VDS gds VDS gmVGS I D V

GS

(3)

where VP [V] is the threshold voltage, VGS [V] is the gate-source voltage, VDS [V] is the drain-source voltage,
whereas =IDSS/|VTH|2 [A/V2], IDSS [A] is the saturation current at VGS=0V. The ratio between transconductance
gm=ID/VGS and overall output conductance gds=ID/VDS gives the unloaded common source gain:
AVcs g m g ds1 g ds 2 VIN VP VGS m n m n
1

(4)

Substituting (2) in (1), if Cd1>>Ceq and (Cd1/Ceq)<<Q , calculating the modulus of (1) we have the PT gain at f=fp:

AVPT p N Cd 1 COUT , N Cd 1 NCOUT

1

(5)

As stated before, the PT input impedance at s=j2fp is real and, if Cd1>>Ceq and CeqCM, is given by:

Z IN p Q C M C d 1

RM

(6)

Combining (3),(4),(5), (6), we can obtain the loop gain T=T(VIN). Putting T=1 and inverting the relation against VIN,
provides the minimum input voltage to achieve oscillation:

VIN , MIN

m n
mn

VGS

NCOUT
Cd 1

QC

/ Cd 1 RM n m VP 2 I DSS VP VGS
1

QC

/ Cd 1

(7)

4. Measurements
A prototype of the circuit was set-up to validate the proposed model. A TTi EL302T standard power supply, with
an external RS series resistance of 2.2, was used to supply the circuit. Measurements were performed using a
Tektronix MSO 2024 oscilloscope. Furthermore, operational amplifiers LMC6482A by Texas Instruments were
used in buffer configuration as active probes, since the output resistance of 10M provided by the oscilloscope
probe were not sufficient to directly measure oscillations at PTs output port because of strong load effects. The

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Antonio Camarda et al. / Procedia Engineering 87 (2014) 1521 1524

estimated DC drop voltage on RS, much less than 1mV, was measured by a digital multimeter (Agilent 34401A)), by
measuring potentials on both resistance terminals, tthus the assumption to neglect the effect of RS was verified. The
JFET parameters used in the equations were taken ffrom the Spice model provided by the manufacturer.

Fig. 2: (a) Measurements of transient response, with a VIN raamp reaching 73 mV in about 25 seconds (to simulate the slow transient off the
voltage provided by a TEG). Blue wave: output voltage. Red w
wave: VIN, green wave: VA oscillation. VB cannot be directly measured, as even
e
few additional pF of a probe can cause load strong effects. (b) C
Comparison between VB and VA: the signals are out of phase of 180 degrees.

The output capacitor is charged to about 1.83V ((no load), whereas (7) gives 83mV as minimum startup voltaage,
proving the effectiveness of the adopted modeling aapproach. In addition, in steady state, the large signal behavio
or of
the common source is similar to a class AB amplifier, because VB falls below the JFETs threshold voltage (Fig. 2b)
thus it shows improved efficiency and a lower inpuut voltage is sufficient to maintain oscillation (about 56mV). VA
and VB are clearly out of phase of 180 degrees, thhis means the PT is working beyond resonance, and since att the
antiresonance, the loop gain is higher because thhe PT input impedance is higher, the antiresonance frequeency
corresponds to the oscillation frequency. The meaasured oscillation frequency was 106.4kHz, whereas (2) preddicts
104.9kHz . With a 10M load (oscilloscope probe)), the output voltage (VOUT) drops to about 1.3V.
5. Conclusion
b
A start-up oscillator based on a PT was pressented. A minimum start-up voltage of about 73mV has been
measured, and the experimental measurements agrree with the provided mathematical model: little differences are
mostly due to the mismatch between models of ddiscrete devices provided by the manufacturer and their acctual
behavior. The steady-state output voltage in a no looad condition is about 1.83V, and this make the presented sysstem
suitable for boosting low voltages for EH applicaations, e.g. for the battery-less start-up of a conventional poower
DC/DC converter. In addition the model shows the possibility to further decrease the minimum VIN if a higher Q PT
is used, by adjusting the PT gain and its input impeddance with an input external capacitance according to (5) and (6).
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the Italian M
MIUR within the framework of the national project "Green T
Tags
and Sensors with Ultra-Wideband Identification andd Localization Capabilities (GRETA).

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