Design of High Power Electrostatic Motor and Generator Using Electrets

This paper describes the design of an electrostatic motor/generator using electrets and its circuit. By using electrets which generate permanent electric field on a rotor, higher power than that of conventional types is expected. We revealed that the maximum power is obtained from the motor/generator when the ratio of the gap to the width of electrodes is optimized at 0.6. And we estimated that 30.4 W output is obtained from the motor/generator with a 6mm diameter rotor at a rotational speed of 1 Mrpm by applying 200 V to 3 μm electrode gap. To use this output, however, a circuit which escapes loss due to charging/discharging cycle of a parasitic capacitance at the stator electrode is essential. We designed a novel circuit using inductor-capacitor (LC) resonance, and confirmed that over 80% of theoretically-ideal output is available using this circuit. Keywords: electrostatic motor, electrostatic generator, electret, gas turbine.