HIGH PERFORMANCE TRANSLUCENT SOFT PIEZOELECTRIC NANOCOMPOSITES

Soft piezoelectric nanocomposites have attracted significant interest due to their flexibility and stretchability which are beneficial for a variety of applications. However, there is no soft and transparent piezoelectric material with good piezoelectric performance The transparency of piezoelectric nanocomposite would be beneficial for the applications that need both good transmission of light and energy harvesting/sensing capability. To address this issue, a facile method to fabricate high performance soft piezoelectric nanocomposites with enhanced light transmission is developed by incorporating silver nanowires as conductive fillers. During the fabrication process, ethanol was used to help the mixing of the composites and continuous magnetic stirring was applied during ethanol evaporation for good blending of the composite. After curing the mixture, the piezoelectric coefficient (d33) was measured to evaluate the piezoelectric performance by measuring the electric output as a function of a mechanical loading. The data analysis showed that the silver nanowire incorporated piezoelectric composite has a higher d33 coefficient (d33~100 pC/N at its peak) than that of the commercially available PVDF (d33: 30~40 pC/N). We envision that the methods we developed and the findings from the study will contribute to applications of piezoelectric composites for a wider range of applications and provide guidelines for future research