Gaël Sebald

This paper deals with small-power energy harvesting from heat. It can be achieved using both thermoelectric and pyroelectric effects. In the first case, temperature gradients are necessary. The main difficulty of thermoelectric energy harvesting is imposing a large temperature gradient. This requires huge heat flows because of the limited surface heat exchanges and the large heat conductivity of thermoelectric materials. This results in a drastic decrease of power and the efficiency of conversio

In the framework of microgenerators, we present in this paper the key points for energy harvesting from temperature using ferroelectric materials. Thermoelectric devices profit from temperature spatial gradients, whereas ferroelectric materials require temporal fluctuation of temperature, thus leading to different applications targets. Ferroelectric materials may harvest perfectly the available thermal energy whatever the materials properties (limited by Carnot conversion efficiency) whereas the

This paper presents an experimental piezoelectric energy harvester exhibiting strong mechanical nonlinear behavior. Vibration energy harvesters are usually resonant mechanical systems working at resonance. The resulting mechanical amplification gives an output power multiplied by the mechanical quality factor Q when compared to non-resonant systems, provided that the electromechanical coupling k2 is high as well as the mechanical quality factor Q. However, increasing the Q value results in a nar

Pyroelectric and electrocaloric characterization has been determined for 0.75Pb(Mg1∕3Nb2∕3)O3–0.25PbTiO3 relaxor based single crystal and ceramic. Differential scanning calorimetry was used for measuring the electrocaloric response for different electric fields in the vicinity of the Curie temperature. For both ceramic and crystals the maximum activity is found to be around the transition temperature. On the other hand hysteresis loops for different temperatures were used to predict the electroc

This work deals with energy harvesting from temperature variations. It is shown here that direct pyroelectric energy harvesting (connecting an adapted resistance, for example) is not effective, whereas Ericsson-based cycles give energy 100 times higher. The principle and experimental validation of the Ericsson cycle are shown with the example of 0.90Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3–0.10PbTiO3 ceramic. Harvested energy reached 186 mJ cm−3 for 50 °C temperature variation and electric field cycle of 3.5 kV mm−1. A

Vibration energy harvesters are usually resonant mechanical systems working at resonance. The subsequent mechanical amplification results in output powers multiplied by the mechanical quality factor when compared to non-resonant systems. The main drawback is the difficulty of matching a given vibration frequency range to the energy harvester's resonance frequency. Among several techniques, the use of nonlinear mechanical resonators was proposed in several studies for enlarging energy harvester p

Electrocaloric properties of poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TrFE-CFE)] terpolymer were determined by two methods. A modified differential scanning calorimeter measures the entropy variation when applying an electric field under isothermal conditions. Alternative technique consists of an infrared imaging camera that gives direct information on temperature variation in pseudo-adiabatic condition. Both techniques give similar results with a heat capacity of

Caloric materials exhibit significant entropy variations when applying appropriate excitation, pushing forward the development of solid-state cooling systems. Their development includes materials' properties optimization, with a focus on their adiabatic temperature change when driven at their limit. In order to sustain the device development, an analytical model for regenerative cooling systems is presented in this work. It consists of a caloric material driven cyclically so that it exhibits har

This paper presents a model describing the hysteresis in ferroelectric materials at moderate to high driving levels. Hysteresis and nonlinearities are attributed to the irreversible displacement of domain walls. The model, based on a simple mechanism related to the dry-friction concept, is developed to describe the hysteresis of polarization and strain under electric field and stress. Besides coefficients such as ε33 and d33 also exhibit large hysteresis loops under high electric and/or mechanic

Magneto-rheological (MR) elastomers contain micro-/nano-sized ferromagnetic particles dispersed in a soft elastomer matrix, and their rheological properties (storage and loss moduli) exhibit a significant dependence on the application of a magnetic field (namely MR effect). Conversely, it is reported in this work that this multiphysics coupling is associated with an inverse effect (i.e. the dependence of the magnetic properties on mechanical strain), denoted as the pseudo-Villari effect. MR elas

In the framework of elastocaloric (eC) refrigeration, the fatigue effect on the eC effect of natural rubber (NR) is investigated. Repetitive deformation cycles at engineering strain regime from 1 to 6 results in a rapid rupture (approx. 800 cycles). Degradation of properties and fatigue life are then investigated at three different strain regimes with the same strain amplitude: before onset strain of strain-induced crystallization (SIC) (strain regime of 0-3), onset strain of melting (strain reg

(1-x)Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-xPbTiO3 (PMN-PT) and (1-x)Pb(Zn1/3Nb2/3)O3-xPbTiO3 (PZN-PT) single crystals are considered to behave like soft Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) ceramics because of their small mechanical quality factor Qm and poor stability under external disturbances (Qm > 500-1000 for hard PZT ceramic, and Qm < 100 for soft PZT and PMN-PT and PZN-PT single crystals). At weak signal excitation of the first resonance mode, the displacement at the end of a lateral bar is proportional to the Q31d31 figure o