Analysis, design and experimental characterization of diode-less transducers for DC-to-DC multiplication

Voltage multiplication is often needed both to perform accurate measurement of both DC and AC voltages and in the energy accumulation section of transducers used for energy scavenging. Classical voltage multipliers are based on electronic circuits that require a voltage supply in order to guarantee the desired behavior; this in turn creates a disadvantage in terms of power consumption that could affect the overall power budget in very low power systems and energy harvesting devices. Moreover the presence of diodes poses a limit, due to their inherent voltage threshold, to the minimum level of the voltage that can be multiplied, which inhibits the use of voltage multipliers in micro-power generators with ultra-low voltage output. The device proposed here implements a "vibration driven" DC-to-DC voltage multiplication; it uses capacitors and cantilevers to realize mechanical switches. Active switches and diodes are not used, therefore, neither a power budget has to be accounted for the operation of the device nor any limiting threshold has to be considered as starting level for the voltage to be multiplied. The proposed solution has been first analytically modeled and numerically studied. A prototype device has been realized and an extensive experimental measurement campaign has been performed in order to validate the concepts. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.