Time： 15: 00pm-16: 00pm, July 2, 2019

Location： South Meeting room 301, West Building 5, Qujiang Campus

Lecturer: Professor Salvatore Baglio

Inviter: Professor Ruqiang YAN

Title:

Playing with piezoelectric cantilevers, magnets and stoppers in vibrationally noisy environments for low voltage energy harvesting and storage applications and other novel assorted applications.

Abstract:

Vibration Energy Harvesting has received a lot of attention in recent years, because of the ubiquitous existence of vibrations in a variety of environments. In real-life device implementation, however, several problems are encountered particularly when the harvesters are intended to power miniaturized systems at micro and/or nano scale; in these cases, storing the collected energy can pose significant problems due to the very low level of voltages involved that conflict with the threshold of blocking diodes.

Investigations on this specific subject have lead us to the development of a family of devices which exploits the synergetic use of piezoelectric materials, flexible beams, magnets and mechanical stoppers together with some concepts of nonlinear dynamics used to accurately model and understand the device behaviors.

Here we present an excursion that begins with the genesis of these ideas and leads to a family of devices able to capture mechanical energy, convert it into electrical energy, and store this energy regardless of the voltage level. The switching mechanism with mechanical stopper will be used as a leverage to overcome the diode threshold. Even further, it will be shown that the appropriate use of specific building blocks can lead to devices able to multiply voltages and rectify signals operating at any voltage level without the necessity of diodes; hence, these devices can perform, even at very low voltages.

Short Bio:

Salvatore Baglio received the “Laurea” and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Catania, Italy, in 1990 and 1994, respectively. Since 1996 he is with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica Elettronica e Informatica, University of Catania, where he is now Full Professor of Instrumentation and Measurement. His research interests are mainly focused on micro and nanotechnologies for sensors and transducers, micro and nanosensors, hysteretic materials for sensors, nonlinear dynamics for transducers, methodologies and integrated devices for energy harvesting. He has coauthored more than 400 scientific publications including papers in international journals and in proceedings of international conferences, books, chapters in books. Prof. Baglio is IEEE Fellow. He has served as Associate Editor for the IEEE Transaction on Circuits and Systems and Distinguished lecturer for the IEEE Circuit and System Society.

Prof. Baglio has been Associate Editor of the IEEE Transaction on Instrumentation and Measurements since 2009 and is now, since 2015, Associate Editor in Chief. He has been the General co-Chair of IEEE I2MTC 2018, Houston, and of IEEE SAS 2016, Catania. Salvo Baglio is an I&M Society AdCom member (2015-2018) where he has served as Vice President Education (2016-2017), as Society representative in the IEEE Sensor Council AdCom (2017-2019). He is currently the Executive Vice President (2018-2019) of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society.