News

Human-Centric Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Systems

April 26, 2015 by Jeff Shepard

Energy Motion Systems, Inc. (EMS) has launched in Southern California to serve the needs of the North American energy harvesting market. EMS' objective is to offer US-based manufacturers and integrators in the med tech, and wearables and personal electronics markets its expertise in the field of energy harvesting through patent-pending piezoelectric-based technology. Although piezoelectric materials and their benefits have been known for close to a century, EMS has applied its technical know-how to the manufacture of materials that can generate the energy necessary for powering smart devices (smart watches, smartphones, wearables, etc.) as well as medical devices and sensors (cochlear implants, pacemakers, embedded sensors, etc.).

In close coordination with French R&D exclusive partner Crystal Device, recipient of several grants and awards for their technological breakthroughs in the world of piezoelectrics, EMS has managed to disrupt the status quo and enables applications for the technology that were previously out of reach. EMS’ prototypes achieve bench tests results that are an order of magnitude better than existing products thanks to much higher responsiveness to motion, a wider range of functional frequencies, smaller volume, more form factors, and higher energy generation per unit of volume.

“We are especially excited to work with companies whose products can be powered by natural human motions, the greenest possible form of energy. Whether the applications for our technology are in-body or out-of-body, we can harvest energy and power important devices through the typical day-to-day activities of their wearers,” says Marc Bouvrot, EMS’ CTO and Chairman of the Board.

EMS is capitalizing on two trends: 1) the miniaturization of in-body medical devices and their lowered requirements for energy, and 2) the explosion of wearable and out-of-body consumer devices that need to be powered. “We recognized that these two very different markets have converged recently and created an unprecedented demand for MEMS that our expertise and technology are uniquely enabling,” offers JP Clement, SVP, Marketing.

Demo kits showcasing the size, responsiveness and energy generation superiority of EMS’ technology are being developed for interested partners and will be commercially available in June 2015.