Natural monosaccharide-based piezoelectric supramolecular materials for energy harvesting and information transmission

Abstract

Biomolecular assemblies with non-centrosymmetric structures exhibit piezoelectric response toward bionanotechnology.Yet, the piezoelectricity of monosaccharide self-assembled materials has not been reported. Herein, for the first time, we have systematically investigated the piezoelectric properties of fourteen natural monosaccharide-based supramolecular materials toward energy harvesting and information transmission. Hydroxyl number and orientation determined the supramolecular arrangements and piezoelectricity of monosaccharide assemblies. Density functional theory (DFT) calculation revealed the maximum piezoelectric coefficients of monosaccharide assemblies ranged from 6 to 13.7 pC/N, in which a-D-Gal assemblies exhibited a higher value. The a-D-Gal assemblies-based piezoelectric device produced opencircuit voltage of 1.08 V under 55 N which lighted up an LED by charging a 0.1 μF capacitor for 1 minute, and reached a voltage of 32 V across the capacitor after 4 minutes of charging. The a-D-Gal assemblies-based composite film can associate with Morse code for information transmission, enabling the conversion of electrical signals into numbers, letters, and words. This work not only reports the piezoelectric properties of various monosaccharide self-assemblies and investigates the correlation between supramolecular structure and piezoelectric response, but also provides new ideas for the development of innovative green energy biomaterials and electronic information transmission media.