Adaptation of a Solid-State Marx Modulator for Electroactive Polymer

Abstract

Electroactive polymers show promising characteristic such as lightness, compactness, flexibility and large displacements making them a candidate for application in cardiac assist devices. This revives the need for quasi-square wave voltage supply switching between 0 and several kilo-Volts, that must be efficient, to limit the heat dissipation, and compact in order to be implanted. The high access resistance, associated to compliant electrodes, represents an additional difficulty. Here, a solid-state Marx modulator is adapted to cope with electroactive polymer characteristics, taking advantage of an efficient energy transfer over a sequential multistep charge/discharge process. To ensure compactness, efficiency as well as the needs of an implanted device, a wireless magnetic field based communication, and power transfer system has been implemented. This work demonstrates the benefit of this design through simulations, and experimental validation on a cardiac assist device. At a voltage of 7 kV, an efficiency of up to 88% has been achieved over a complete charge/discharge cycle.

Novel para-aortic cardiac assistance using a pre-stretched dielectric elastomer actuator

“…The presented results show a significant improvement compared to previous designs and showcase the interest of this solution for future clinical application. The proposed DEA-based cardiac assist device only require electric stimulation and research is currently ongoing to develop transcutaneous wireless power transfer in order to have a fully implanted device (without drivelines passing through the skin) [ 24 ]. Furthermore, some aspects of the systems are being refined to be more adapted to clinical applications.…”

A 99.74% Efficient Capacitor-Charging Converter Using Partial Power Processing for Electrocalorics

“…The recoverable part of the stored energy in the electrocaloric capacitor can be recycled by an external charge recovery circuit [14], [15], [19]- [21], such that almost all stored energy is reused for cyclic charging and discharging operation. High electrocaloric materials energy efficient has also been demonstrated in lead scandium tantalate (PST) [22], and achieved already a 13 K high temperature span using an electrocaloric regenerator [23].…”