| Pacific Rim Symposium on Surfaces, Coatings and Interfaces (PacSurf 2016) | |
| Energy Harvesting & Storage | Tuesday Sessions |
| Session EH-TuE |
| Session: | Battery/Supercapacitor Coatings, egs., Li* Batteries & Thermo-/Piezo-electrics |
| Presenter: | Sohini Kar-Narayan, University of Cambridge, UK |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Harvesting energy from ambient sources in our environment has generated tremendous interest as it offers a fundamental energy solution for ‘small power’ applications, including, but not limited to, ubiquitous wireless sensor nodes; portable, flexible and wearable electronics; biomedical implants and structural/environmental monitoring devices. Energy harvesting from ambient vibrations is particularly attractive as these are ever present and easily accessible, originating from sources such as moving parts of machines, fluid flow and even body movements. In this context, piezoelectric materials offer the simplest means of directly converting mechanical vibrations into electrical power and are well suited for microscale device applications, thus offering a means of superseding traditional power sources such as batteries that require constant replacing/recharging and that do not scale easily with size. In particular, nanoscale piezoelectric energy harvesters, or nanogenerators, are capable of converting small ambient vibrations into electrical energy, thus paving the way for the realisation of the next generation of self-powered devices. A recent review article from our group [1] highlighted the fact that nanogenerator research to date has mainly focused on traditional piezoelectric materials in the form of ceramics, but these are stiff and prone to mechanical failure. On the other hand, piezoelectric polymers [1-3], although less well studied, have several advantages over ceramics such as being flexible, robust, lightweight, easy and cheap to fabricate, lead free and bio compatible. However, they do suffer from inferior piezoelectric properties in comparison to ceramics. The field thus faces orthogonal difficulties associated with these two classes of materials. In this talk, I will discuss work from our group aimed at developing novel hybrid polymer-ceramic nanocomposites [2,4,5] combining the best of both materials, while developing scalable nanofabrication techniques for flexible, low-cost and highly efficient polymer-based nanogenerators and sensors.
[1] S. Crossley, R.A. Whiter & S. Kar-Narayan, Materials Science and Technology 30, 1613 (2014).
[2] R.A. Whiter, V. Narayan & S. Kar-Narayan, Advanced Energy Materials DOI: 10.1002/aenm.201400519 (2014)
[3] S. Crossley & S. Kar-Narayan, Nanotechnology 26, 344001 (2015).
[4] C. Ou, P. E. Sanchez-Jimenez, A. Datta, F. L. Boughey, R. A. Whiter, S-L. Sahonta & S. Kar-Narayan, ACS Applied Materials & InterfacesDOI: 10.1021/acsami.6b04041 (2016)
[5] F. L. Boughey, T. Davies, A. Datta, R. A. Whiter, S.-L. Sahonta, S. Kar-Narayan, Nanotechnology (Letters) 27, 28LT02 (2016).