Electrical performances of pyroelectric bimetallic strip heat engines describing a Stirling cycle

Arthur Arnaud (1, 2) , Jihane Boughaleb (1, 3) , Stephane Monfray (1) , Frédéric Boeuf (1) , Orphée Cugat (2) , Thomas Skotnicki (1)

1 ST-CROLLES - STMicroelectronics [Crolles]
2 G2ELab - Laboratoire de Génie Electrique de Grenoble
3 LGEF - Laboratoire de Génie Electrique et Ferroélectricité

This paper deals with the analytical modeling of pyroelectric bimetallic strip heat engines. These devices are designed to exploit the snap-through of a thermo-mechanically bistable membrane to transform a part of the heat flowing through the membrane into mechanical energy and to convert it into electric energy by means of a piezoelectric layer deposited on the surface of the bistable membrane. In this paper, we describe the properties of these heat engines in the case when they complete a Stirling cycle, and we evaluate the performances (available energy, Carnot efficiency…) of these harvesters at the macro- and micro-scale.

Domaines: Energie électrique; Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Arthur Arnaud, Jihane Boughaleb, Stephane Monfray, Frédéric Boeuf, Orphée Cugat, et al.. Electrical performances of pyroelectric bimetallic strip heat engines describing a Stirling cycle. PowerMEMS 2015, The 15th International Conference on Micro- and Nano-Technology for Power Generation and Energy Conversion Applications, Dec 2015, Boston, United States. ⟨hal-01243269⟩