Improved Performance of the Piezoelectric Monomorph with Perpendicular Electrode Connections for Sensing and Energy Harvesting

Piezoelectric monomorph, which has only one element, is a potential structure for piezoelectric applications in some extreme conditions. But as the restriction of the strain neutral layer, the traditional parallel electrode connection is not effective for sensing and energy harvesting. In this paper, perpendicular electrode connections were designed to utilize the nonuniform shear piezoelectric effect in the cross section of the monomorph, which made the monomorph avoid the restriction of the strain neutral layer. The PZT5 ceramic monomorph was preliminarily studied in this experiment. By comparing seven forms of perpendicular electrode connections with the traditional parallel electrode connection, the whole superposed perpendicular electrode connection is considered as the optimal output way for the monomorph. It can produce 13 V peak-to-peak (pk-pk) voltage in open circuit and 14.56 μW maximum power with the matching resistance, which are much more than the parallel electrode connection 0.78 V and 0.14 μW.