More power to the people: getting the most from a dielectric elastomer generator

Abstract

A dielectric elastomer generator (DEG) can be used for converting mechanical energy from natural motion sources such as walking, waves, trees etc, into electrical energy. A DEG is comprised of a soft and flexible Dielectric Elastomer capacitor (DE), a Priming Circuit (PC), which transfers high potential charge onto/off the DE electrodes, and a power extraction circuit which harvests the generated power. To generate power, the PC must charge and discharge the DE in synchronization with the DE's capacitance change. A simple circuit to do this exists: the self-priming circuit (SPC). The SPC consists of diodes and capacitors which passively switch between charge delivery and charge receiving states in synchronization with the DE's capacitance change. Until now there has been no understanding of how to design a SPC in order to maximize harvested energy from the dielectric elastomer (DE). A new mathematical model for a SPC is presented, leading to design and optimization. An accuracy of 0.1% between model, simulation and experiment is obtained once losses are taken into consideration. The behavior of the SPC is shown to be related to the maximum and minimum capacitance's of the DE, but is largley unaffected by the exact capacitance waveform