Improved piezoelectricity of porous cellulose material via flexible polarization-initiate bridge for self-powered sensor
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Published on: March 24, 2023
Shufang Li1, Yi He1, Xian Ye1
1State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology, and Chongqing Key Laboratory of Soft-Matter Material Chemistry and Function Manufacturing, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
Abstract:
Self-powered piezoelectric sensors based on cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) porous materials are light-weight and portable, whereas using unmodified CNCs can hardly obtain enough piezoelectric properties without external strong polarization due to its irreversible deformation caused by low toughness. Here, we bonded rod-like CNCs with a soft polymer, poly ethylene glycol (PEG), and hypothesized that PEG could toughen the material and its dielectric signal could induce the CNC polarization. We further adsorbed graphene (GR) as surface electrodes to prepare a CNC-PEG-GR piezoelectric porous material with density of 0.096 g·cm-3. The voltage output reached maximum when the frequency matched the dielectric relaxation frequency of PEG. We also increased the length-diameter ratio of porous material pores from 1.1 to 3.3 by adjusting its freeze-drying process, and the voltage output could reach to 0.7 V at a moderate ratio. They could be conveniently integrated into portable self-powered sensors applied to the intelligent wearable electronic devices.
