Energy harvesting (EH) which scavenges electric power from ambient, otherwise wasted, energy sources has been explored to develop self-powered portable electronic devices. Vibration energy, a widely available ambient energy source, can be converted into electric power using a piezoelectric energy harvester that generates electric potential in response to applied mechanical strains. As a compact and durable design paradigm, a piezoelectric energy harvesting skin (PEH skin) which can be directly attached onto the surface of a vibrating engineered system has been proposed to scavenge electric power from vibration energy. The goal of this chapter is to describe the core technologies for the realization of the PEH skin from a system integration perspective as four parts: (a) modeling, (b) design, (c) manufacturing, and (d) demonstration. The readers will be able to learn the entire procedure of developing the PEH skin and applying it to self-powered wireless sensor network (WSN) through this chapter.
