Abstract
Recent advancements in PowerMEMS are reviewed. Variety of power generation machine is under development following advances in micro-fabrication technologies. Micro-thermoelectric Generators have advantages in their simple construction, and suit for energy harvesting from waste heat of the internal combustion engines, although the efficiency is low. Micro-fuel cells are recently attracting a lot of research interest, because it is relatively easy to compete against expensive Lithium-Ion batteries in small applications. It is achieving rapid progress, however, it is suffering for variety of problems and the generated power is still low. To achieve both higher power density and energy density, micro-internal combustion engines, such as gas turbines and rotary engines, are under development, however, those are still in a phase of proving the concept. Power MEMS is an emerging technology, which has potential to provide a power for variety of new mobile machines in future.
