Silex Receives VINNOVA Grant for New Energy Harvesting Technology

Silex Microsystems has been awarded a grant of nearly $1 million USD (5,8 MSEK) to develop its PZT piezoelectric material manufacturing capability to support a new class of MEMS products that enable energy harvesting directly from the vibrational energy in the environment. This project is called SEHPMET and stands for the Smart Energy Optimization via Energy Harvesting utilizing new Swedish Piezo MEMS Technology. In addition to assuming the role of Project Coordinator for SEHPMET, Silex will optimize its PZT technology for the energy harvesting applications and work with the SEHPMET partners to fabricate wafer-level encapsulated prototypes to be used for testing and verification of the energy harvesting capabilities.

This project addresses the dramatically increasing demand for low-cost, energy-efficient, autonomous sensor systems for the 'Internet-of-Things.' The overall goal is to research and develop a completely integrated energy-harvesting platform with an initial focus on self-powered vehicular wireless sensor systems for tire pressure, speed, and strain monitoring. To achieve this goal, the key objectives of the project are: (1) to utilize Silex's existing PZT-MEMS technology for development of a novel low-cost Piezoelectric-MEMS energy harvester, (2) to develop models, simulation and test methods to characterize the Piezo-MEMS device, and (3) to develop a tailor-made energy-efficient on-chip power management solution.

"The explosion of sensor networks needed by the Internet of Things represents a great technical challenge to develop self-powered networks from the ground up," says Dr. Thorbjorn Ebefors, Chief Technologist and VP of R&D at Silex Microsystems AB. "The goals of SEHPMET will not only strengthen Sweden's ability to address this market, but also deliver working platforms that directly address this emerging need."

The project represents a cooperation between three world-leading partners with unique combined expertise in Piezo-MEMS material, including fabrication technology (Silex); modeling, design and testing of the Piezo-MEMS energy-harvester (Acreo Swedish ICT); and design of the integrated power management system as well as future fully integrated wireless sensor (Division of Electronic Devices, Linkoping University.)

The total budget for the SEHPMET project is over $1.4 million USD (8,9 MSEK) and extends from November of 2013 through early 2016. Work on the Energy Harvesting solution, however, is expected to continue through 2018 with a larger phase-II international collaboration project aiming for the commercialization of the technology with the delivery of a completed prototype sensor system solution. This solution will include the piezo-MEMS harvester, innovative energy storage devices, an on-chip power management system, a sensor readout and signal acquisition, digital signal processor, and an on-chip wireless transceiver.