74 research outputs found
A complete study of electroactive polymers for energy scavenging: modelling and experiments
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.Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association
(http://irevues.inist.fr/EDA-Publishing
New DRIE-Patterned Electrets for Vibration Energy Harvesting
This paper is about a new manufacturing process aimed at developing stable
SiO2/Si3N4 patterned electrets using a Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) step
for an application in electret-based Vibration Energy Harvesters (e-VEH). This
process consists in forming continuous layers of SiO2/Si3N4 electrets in order
to limit surface conduction phenomena and is a new way to see the problem of
electret patterning. Experimental results prove that patterned electrets
charged by a positive corona discharge show excellent stability with high
surface charge densities that may reach 5mC/m^2 on 1.1\mu m-thick layers, even
with fine patterning and harsh temperature conditions (up to 250{\deg}C). This
paves the way to new e-VEH designs and manufacturing processes.Comment: Proc. European Energy Conference, 201
Surface quality studies of high T superconductors of the Hg , Tl and HgTl-families: RBS and resonant C and O backscattering studies
The composition, crystallinity, uniformity, purity, and thermal stability of cuprate superconductors have been studied by Rutherford backscattering and channeling spectrometry, and 3.045 MeV He oxygen non-Rutherford resonant scattering. Further experiments have been performed with 1.75 MeV Hcarbon non-Rutherford resonant scattering. Three sets of samples were studied : HgBaCuO (Hg1201), HgT1BaCaCuO (Hg,T1-1223) and T1BaCuO/LaA10 (T1-2201), either in bulk or as an epitaxial thin film. It was observed that the superconductors exhibit a metal deficiency near the surface, which is largely compensated by excess oxygen. Moreover, the samples are significantly contaminated with carbon within the probing region of the H beam. The thermal stability and surface degradation were studied in both oxidizing ambient and vacuum. As a general trend, the heavy metal deficiency — and consequently the compensating oxygen excess — is enhanced as the temperature increases
Topological (Sliced) Doping of a 3D Peierls System: Predicted Structure of Doped BaBiO3
At hole concentrations below x=0.4, Ba_(1-x)K_xBiO_3 is non-metallic. At x=0,
pure BaBiO3 is a Peierls insulator. Very dilute holes create bipolaronic point
defects in the Peierls order parameter. Here we find that the Rice-Sneddon
version of Peierls theory predicts that more concentrated holes should form
stacking faults (two-dimensional topological defects, called slices) in the
Peierls order parameter. However, the long-range Coulomb interaction, left out
of the Rice-Sneddon model, destabilizes slices in favor of point bipolarons at
low concentrations, leaving a window near 30% doping where the sliced state is
marginally stable.Comment: 6 pages with 5 embedded postscript figure
Magnetoresistive study of antiferromagnetic--weak ferromagnetic transition in single-crystal LaCuO
The resistive measurements were made to study the magnetic field-induced
antiferromagnetic (AF) - weak ferromagnetic (WF) transition in LaCuO
single-crystal. The magnetic field (DC or pulsed) was applied normally to the
CuO layers. The transition manifested itself in a drastic decrease of the
resistance in critical fields of ~5-7 T. The study is the first to display the
effect of the AF -WF transition on the conductivity of the LaCuO
single-crystal in the parallel - to - CuO layers direction. The results
provide support for the 3-dimensional nature of the hopping conduction of this
layered oxide.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, RevTe
Phase diagram of the one-dimensional extended attractive Hubbard model for large nearest-neighbor repulsion
We consider the extended Hubbard model with attractive on-site interaction U
and nearest-neighbor repulsions V. We construct an effective Hamiltonian
H_{eff} for hopping t<<V and arbitrary U<0. Retaining the most important terms,
H_{eff} can be mapped onto two XXZ models, solved by the Bethe ansatz. The
quantum phase diagram shows two Luttinger liquid phases and a region of phase
separation between them. For density n<0.422 and U<-4, singlet superconducting
correlations dominate at large distances. For some parameters, the results are
in qualitative agreement with experiments in BaKBiO.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Doping Dependence of the Electronic Structure of Ba_{1-x}K_{x}BiO_{3} Studied by X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy
We have performed x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and x-ray photoemission
spectroscopy (XPS) studies of single crystal Ba_{1-x}K_{x}BiO_{3} (BKBO)
covering the whole composition range . Several features in
the oxygen 1\textit{s} core XAS spectra show systematic changes with .
Spectral weight around the absorption threshold increases with hole doping and
shows a finite jump between and 0.40, which signals the
metal-insulator transition. We have compared the obtained results with
band-structure calculations. Comparison with the XAS results of
BaPb_{1-x}Bi_{x}O_{3} has revealed quite different doping dependences between
BKBO and BPBO. We have also observed systematic core-level shifts in the XPS
spectra as well as in the XAS threshold as functions of , which can be
attributed to a chemical potential shift accompanying the hole doping. The
observed chemical potential shift is found to be slower than that predicted by
the rigid band model based on the band-structure calculations.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures include
X-Ray-Diffraction Study of Charge-Density-Waves and Oxygen-Ordering in YBa2Cu3O6+x Superconductor
We report a temperature-dependent increase below 300 K of diffuse
superlattice peaks corresponding to q_0 =(~2/5,0,0) in an under-doped
YBa_2Cu_3O_6+x superconductor (x~0.63). These peaks reveal strong c-axis
correlations involving the CuO_2 bilayers, show a non-uniform increase below
\~220 K with a plateau for ~100-160 K, and appear to saturate in the
superconducting phase. We interpret this unconventional T-dependence of the
``oxygen-ordering'' peaks as a manifestation of a charge density wave in the
CuO_2 planes coupled to the oxygen-vacancy ordering.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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