Skip to ContentSkip to Navigation
About us Latest news News News articles

Published in Nature Materials: Ultra-thin piezoelectrics for energy harvesting

17 October 2011

Piezoelectric materials can transform mechanical energy into electrical energy and vice versa. Because of that they are used in a multitude of everyday applications from gas lighters to inkjet printers and from ultrasound generators in medical applications (echography devices, blood sensors, lithotripters) to vibration dampers (in cars, skis, helicopter blade).

However, piezoelectric materials have the potential to play an even greater role in society by harvesting the energy that is wasted ubiquitously as vibrations (from cars, house appliances, industrial machine) and transforming it into electricity. But in order to fulfil our dream of paving roads, railways and homes with piezoelectrics, these materials have to be made lighter, thinner and less toxic than the ones available today (which contain heavy chemical elements). An important step into this direction has been achieved by a team led by Beatriz Noheda (Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials) and in collaboration with the Mesa+ Institute of the University of Twente, the CIN2-Barcelona and the CEMES-CNRS Institutes in Toulouse and Zaragoza. The results have been published in Nature Materials.

Flexoelectricity

The researches have shown that ultra-thin films (with thickness of about 100 atomic layers) of piezoelectric materials deposited under carefully designed conditions, self-organize and flex at the nanometer scale in periodic fashion. This produces huge strain gradients (large differences in the distances between atoms) in such a way that a new mechanism to produce piezoelectricity can take place (so-called flexoelectricity). This greatly increases the materials response at these small thicknesses. Moreover, this novel way of producing piezoelectricity is less dependent on the chemical composition and will allow non-toxic and more readily available materials to be investigated for piezoelectric energy harvesting application.

Prof. Beatriz Noheda is Associate Professor of Functional Nanomaterials and Rosalind Franklin Fellow. In 2004 she received a NWO Vidi-grant.

Reference: Flexoelectric rotation of polarization in ferroelectric thin films, G. Catalan, A. Lubk, A. H. G. Vlooswijk, E. Snoeck, C. Magen, A. Janssens, G. Rispens, G. Rijnders, D. H. A. Blank and B. Noheda. Nature Materials.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NMAT3141

Figure 1. Map of the X-ray diffraction intensity measured in the flexed ultra-thin films, showing periodic self-organization and unusually large strain gradients.
Figure 1. Map of the X-ray diffraction intensity measured in the flexed ultra-thin films, showing periodic self-organization and unusually large strain gradients.
Figure 2. Transmission Electron microscopy image with atomic resolution of a small region the ultra-thin piezoelectric films (a), showing the strain gradients (colour difference in b)) and bending of the polar axis of the films (arrows in b).
Figure 2. Transmission Electron microscopy image with atomic resolution of a small region the ultra-thin piezoelectric films (a), showing the strain gradients (colour difference in b)) and bending of the polar axis of the films (arrows in b).
Last modified:24 August 2021 09.21 a.m.
View this page in: Nederlands

More news

  • 05 September 2024

    ERC Starting Grants for two UG researchers

    Two UG researches, both working at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant: Jingxiu Xie and Gosia Wlodarczyk-Biegun. The European Research Council's (ERC) Starting Grants consist of €1.5 million each, for a...

  • 23 July 2024

    The chips of the future

    Our computers use an unnecessarily large amount of energy, and we are reaching the limits of our current technology. That is why CogniGron is working on new materials that mimic the way the brain computes, and Professor Tamalika Banerjee will...

  • 18 July 2024

    Smart robots to make smaller chips

    A robotic arm in a factory that repeatedly executes the same movement: that’s a thing of the past, states Ming Cao. Researchers of the University of Groningen are collaborating with high-tech companies to make production processes more autonomous.