Abstract
Soft dielectric elastomers can quickly achieve large deformations when they are subjected to electromechanical loads. They are widely used to fabricate a number of soft functional devices. However, the functions of soft devices are limited to the failure modes of soft dielectric elastomers. In this paper, we use graded dielectric elastomers to produce a soft energy harvester with a strong ability of energy harvesting. Compared to the conventional energy harvester with homogeneous dielectric films, our new energy harvester is made of graded elastomers and can increase both the specific energy from 2.70 J/g to 2.93 J/g and the maximum energy from 6.3 J/g to 8.6 J/g by just using a stiffer outer radius. By optimizing the material parameters in graded dielectric films, the soft energy harvester can reach better performance, and our results can provide guidance for designing powerful energy harvesters.
Highlights
By applying a voltage Φ in the thickness direction and a radial dead load S on the lateral surface, the soft film will expand its in-plane area and decrease its thickness due to the highly nonlinear electromechanical coupling, i.e., the film thickness will decrease from H to h and its in-plane area increases because of the constraint of incompressibility
The four sides of the rectangle form a cycle of the energy harvesting by using the soft energy harvester
We uses a graded elastomer to improve the functionality of a soft energy harvester subjected to electromechanical loads
Summary
To ensure the sustainable development of human life, researchers have been continuously exploring and researching new energy storage materials. For a long period of time, the vast majority of research looks toward new energy storage materials in the field of hard materials for answers. Piezoelectric ceramic (PZT) is one of the most widely used materials in the field of rigid materials for energy harvesters [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. With the rapid development of network and communication technologies, there comes a higher requirement on the energy storage materials and devices, for example, flexoelectricity-based energy harvesting is an alternative to piezoelectrics in nanoscale [8,9]
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