WIEGAND WIRE ENERGY HARVESTING COMPONENTS

POSITAL’s Wiegand assemblies offer a compact and efficient way of harvesting power for electronic circuits in electromechanical devices, eliminating the need for backup batteries.
The operating principle of POSITAL’s Wiegand modules is simple. A “Wiegand wire” is a short length of specially prepared Vicalloy (vanadium-iron-cobalt) wire. When exposed to a changing external magnetic field (e.g. a nearby permanent magnet mounted on a rotating shaft) the Wiegand wire will initially retain its original magnetic polarity, and then abruptly ‘flip’ its polarity when the change to the external magnetic field reaches a certain threshold. This sudden change in the magnetic state of the core induces a current pulse in a copper coil wound around the Vicalloy core. This current pulse is very short-lived, but the energy harvested from the mechanical movement of the magnet can be captured and used to activate a low-power electronic circuit. An important feature of the Wiegand effect is that the amount of electric power generated with each reversal of the magnetic polarization is constant and completely independent of the rate of change of the external magnetic field, even if this happens very slowly. POSITAL Wiegand modules have been used to reliably power rotation counters in tens of millions of devices, including multi-turn rotary encoders, gas and water meters.
- Production Since 1974 – Started by John R. Wiegand
- Proven In Encoders & Water Meters Since > 10 Years
- Used In Access Cards For > 30 Years
- Power Supply For Future IoT Applications
- High Energy Output of ~170 nJ
D&D Engineering – “W’ere YOUR Sensor Guys”
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