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
