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Professor Develops High Performance Piezoelectric Composites
Office of Information | 2018-05-25 | 조회 4814
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Professor Chang Kyu Jeong’s (Electronic Materials Science) team has found that high-performance piezoelectric composites can be produced using the interaction between piezoelectric ceramic nanowires and piezoelectric polymer materials, publishing in Small (IF = 8.643), the world-wide academic journal in the field of materials, in the second issue of May (Volume 14, Issue 19).
Piezoelectric materials are special materials that can exchange mechanical energy and electrical energy, which are widely used in ultrasonic machines, gas ranges, and camera actuators. Representative examples include electronic ceramics such as barium titanate (BaTiO3) and lead titanate zirconate (PZT), the operating principles of which are very well known. Recently, the materials have been applied to 'energy harvesting technology’ which generates mechanical energy for electricity generation.
Some polymer materials such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) show piezoelectric characteristics. Especially, they have the advantage of being easily bent, attracting much attention as they can be used for energy-harvesting technology as well as for curled speakers.
Nonetheless, the piezoelectric principles of the materials remain unclear until recently, raising the question of many scientists. Especially, it is not easy to understand because they behave totally different from general piezoelectric ceramics. Although the Max Planck Institute in Germany succeeded in discovering the principles as we can find in Nature Materials in 2015 (volume 15), it is still difficult to use them effectively along with piezoelectric ceramics.
The technology developed here is a technique for producing an effective piezoelectric energy harvesting device using sophisticated electric field control by mixing barium titanate nanowire and polyvinylidene fluoride. In addition, the merit of nanowires in shape, the mechanical strengthening properties of the composite materials, and multi-physics simulation studies have been fused together to study the way to synergize piezoelectric ceramics and electronic polymers.
This study has significance in that it demonstrates that PVDF, a widely known piezoelectric polymer, is completely different from electronic ceramics, but can solve problems that have been addressed in the same way as piezoelectric ceramics, and can exhibit higher energy harvesting characteristics.
Professor Jeong is currently conducting research on electronic polymers, new electronic materials that are fused with natural environment biomaterials, as well as electronic ceramics.
The research was conducted through close collaboration with Brown University in the USA, and Kyungnam University in South Korea.