Issue 1, 2020

The large piezoelectricity and high power density of a 3D-printed multilayer copolymer in a rugby ball-structured mechanical energy harvester

Abstract

Piezoelectric polymers are characterized by their flexibility and ease of processing into shapes, however, their piezoelectric coefficients, such as d33, are quite low (∼24 pC N−1). Here we report a 3D-printed multilayer β-phase PVDF-TrFE copolymer which does not require high temperature annealing or complicated transfer processes and exhibits a much higher effective piezoelectric coefficient (d33 ∼ 130 pC N−1 for six 10 μm layers). In order to confirm its high power density, a rugby ball-shaped energy harvester, which operates via a flextensional mechanism, was prepared using the multilayer copolymer. The experimental results show that it can produce a peak voltage of ∼88.62 Vpp and a current of 353 μA, which are 2.2 and 10 times those of a single-layer PVDF-TrFE harvester, respectively, under a pressure of 0.046 MPa. Notably, its peak output power density was as high as 16.4 mW cm−2 (according to Ppeak = (VpeakIshort)/2); while at a load of 568 kΩ, it was still 5.81 mW cm−2. The proposed copolymer processing method and flextensional mechanism in a rugby ball configuration show great potential for future micro-energy development in flexible, wearable electronic devices and wireless sensor networks.

Graphical abstract: The large piezoelectricity and high power density of a 3D-printed multilayer copolymer in a rugby ball-structured mechanical energy harvester

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
04 มิ.ย. 2562
Accepted
14 ต.ค. 2562
First published
15 ต.ค. 2562

Energy Environ. Sci., 2020,13, 152-161

The large piezoelectricity and high power density of a 3D-printed multilayer copolymer in a rugby ball-structured mechanical energy harvester

X. Yuan, X. Gao, J. Yang, X. Shen, Z. Li, S. You, Z. Wang and S. Dong, Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, 152 DOI: 10.1039/C9EE01785B

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements