A complete study of electroactive polymers for energy scavenging: modelling and experiments

C. Jean-Mistral (1) , Skandar Basrour (2) , J.J. Chaillout (1) , Agnès Bonvilain (2)

1 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information
2 TIMA - Techniques de l'Informatique et de la Microélectronique pour l'Architecture des systèmes intégrés

Recent progresses in ultra low power microelectronics propelled the development of several microsensors and particularly the self powered microsystems (SPMS). One of their limitations is their size and their autonomy due to short lifetime of the batteries available on the market. To ensure their ecological energetic autonomy, a promising alternative is to scavenge the ambient energy such as the mechanical one. Nowadays, few microgenerators operate at low frequency. They are often rigid structures that can perturb the application or the environment; none of them are perfectly flexible. Thus, our objective is to create a flexible, non-intrusive scavenger using electroactive polymers. The goal of this work is to design a generator which can provide typically 100 ?W to supply a low consumption system. We report in this paper an analytical model which predicts the energy produced by a simple electroactive membrane, and some promising experimental results.

Mots clés: Micro power generators and micro energy sources

Domaines: Autre [cs.OH]; Architectures Matérielles [cs.AR]

C. Jean-Mistral, Skandar Basrour, J.J. Chaillout, Agnès Bonvilain. A complete study of electroactive polymers for energy scavenging: modelling and experiments. DTIP 2007, Apr 2007, Stresa, lago Maggiore, Italy. pp.301-305. ⟨hal-00257706⟩