Multi-axis piezoelectric energy harvesting using MEMS components with slanted beams

During the manufacturing of MEMS components, slanted beams can be produced in the etching process. We show that this can be used to produce skew motion that causes deflection of a proof mass out of the device plane also when the excitation is confined to the device plane. This allows construction of an energy harvester that uses a planar manufacturing process and produces power also with in-plane excitation. To obtain this with traditional methods it would be necessary to manufacture separate components and then mount them with their sensitive axes orthogonal to each other.