Phononic crystals with incomplete line defects: applications in high-performance and broadband acoustic energy localization and harvesting

Using phononic crystals (PnCs) to enhance the electrical output performance of piezoelectric energy harvesting (PEH) devices and broaden the frequency range of harvesting energy is crucial to solving the self-energy of low-power devices such as wireless sensors. In this work, an ultra-wide full-band gap PnC was designed. The concept of a PnC with an incomplete line defect was proposed. The energy localization and harvesting of incomplete line defect PnCs and traditional point defect and line defect PnCs were studied by finite element analysis. The results show that compared with a point defect and a line defect, the output electric power of an incomplete line defect was increased by 31.88 times and 2.51 times, respectively, and the energy localization and harvesting frequency band were widened. By exploring the influence of the periodicity of the vertical incomplete line defect direction on the electrical output performance of the PnC-based PEH system, it is found that the electrical output performance of the 5 × 3 incomplete line defect PnC is the best, and the maximum output voltage and output electric power are 27.36 V and 17.29 mW, respectively. This work provides new insights and ideas for improving the energy localization and harvesting performance of PnC-based PEH systems.