Energy harvesting is an enabling technology for realizing an ambient power supply for wireless sensor nodes and mobile devices. By using flexible photovoltaic cells and piezoelectric films, we can readily harvest ambient energy if flexible energy harvesters can be realized. Conventional silicon circuits, however, are not best suited to realizing flexible large-area energy harvesters because they are not mechanically conformable to uneven surfaces such as shoes. To address this challenge, we propose an organic insole pedometer with a piezoelectric energy harvester in this paper as the first step toward ambient energy harvesting using organic flexible electronics.
['Koichi Ishida', 'Tsung-Ching Huang', 'Kentaro Honda', 'Yasuhiro Shinozuka', 'Hiroshi Fuketa', 'Tomoyuki Yokota', 'Ute Zschieschang', 'Hagen Klauk', 'Gregory Tortissier', 'Tsuyoshi Sekitani', 'Makoto Takamiya', 'Hiroshi Toshiyoshi', 'Takao Someya', 'Takayasu Sakurai']
Insole pedometer with piezoelectric energy harvester and 2V organic digital and analog circuits