Electrostrictive conversion enhancement of polymer composites using a nonlinear approach

Recent trends in electromechanical conversion demonstrated the advantages of using electrostrictive polymers for actuation or energy harvesting. However, their conversion abilities are lower than usual electroactive materials, such as piezoelectrics. The purpose of this Letter is to propose a solution for artificially increasing the coupling factor of electrostrictive materials. Based on an intermittent switching on an electrical circuit that leads to a voltage increase as well as a reduced phase between voltage and velocity, it is shown that such a process allows increasing the converted energy by 1200% and a gain up to 4 in terms of transferred electrical energy.