Piezoelectric materials: Charging forward with new innovations

Piezoelectric materials are materials that produce an electric current when they are placed under
mechanical stress. The piezoelectric process is also reversible, so if you apply an electric current to these
materials, they will actually change shape slightly.

Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials in response to applied
mechanical stress. The word Piezoelectricity means electricity resulting from pressure. The larger circles
represent silicon atoms, while the smaller ones represent oxyzen. A piezoelectric sensor is a device that
uses the piezoelectric effect, to measure changes in pressure, acceleration, temperature, strain, or force
by converting them to an electrical charge. Although originally discovered in 1880 by French physicists
Jacques and Pierre Curie, it was only in the 1950s that manufacturers begin to use the piezoelectric effect
in industrial sensing applications. Since then, this measuring principle has been increasingly used, and has
become a mature technology with excellent inherent reliability. It has been successfully used in medical,
aerospace, nuclear instrumentation, as a tilt sensor in consumer electronics or a pressure sensor in the
touch pads of mobile phones.

Piezoelectrics are materials that can create electricity when subjected to a mechanical stress.They will also
work in reverse, generating a strain by the application of an electric field.The word originates from the
greek word “piezein”, which means “to press”. Discovered in 1880 by Pierre Curie in quartz crystals. The
nature of the piezoelectric effect is closely related to the occurrence of electric dipole moments in solids.
The latter may either be induced for ions on crystal lattice sites with asymmetric charge surroundings or
may directly be carried by molecular groups. The dipole density or polarization (dimensionality [Cm/m3] )
may easily be calculated for crystals by summing up the dipole moments per volume of the crystallographic
unit cell. As every dipole is a vector, the dipole density P is a vector field. Dipoles near each other tend to
be aligned in regions called Weiss domains. The domains are usually randomly oriented, but can be aligned
using the process of poling, a process by which a strong electric field is applied across the material, usually
at elevated temperatures. Not all piezoelectric materials can be poled.

A piezoelectric disk generates a voltage when deformed (change in shape is greatly exaggerated)
 Some examples of piezoelectric materials are PZT (also known as lead zirconate titanate),barium
titanate, and lithium niobate.These man-made materials have more pronounced effect (better material to
use) than quartz and other natural piezoelectric materials. Piezoelectric igniters are commonly used for
butane lighters, gas grills, gas stoves, blowtorches, and improvised potato cannons. Electricity Generation
Some applications require the harvesting of energy from pressure changes, vibrations, or mechanical
impulses. Piezoelectricity, also called the piezoelectric effect, is the ability of certain materials to generate
an AC(alternating current) voltage when subjected to mechanical stress or vibration, or to vibrate when
subjected to an AC voltage, or both. The most common piezoelectric material is quartz.

Piezoelectric materials of interest :

Imagine walking down the street and charging your phone as you walk, charging your laptop by typing, or
powering a nightclub by dancing on a piezoelectric floor! The concept of piezoelectricity has been around
since the 1880s and was discovered by Jacques and Pierre Currie. Despite already being used in things like
lighters to create the spark that ignites the gas, using it as an everyday energy source is still a long way off.

Issues with current piezoelectric materials:

There are 3 issues that we are currently faced with in trying to tap into piezoelectricity as a viable electricity
production method:

 The major issue one is that the quantity of electricity produced is so small, so unless vast installations were
set up, it simply would not have the strength to power our latest gadgets.
 The current is only produced when there is mechanical stress being applied, so as soon as you stop
compressing the material, there is no charge produced.
 The final issue is that up to now, many of the starting products needed to produce the piezoelectric
materials are toxic and difficult to work with.

There are three basic classes of piezoelectric materials used in microfabrication:

 Natural piezoelectric substrates, such as quartz single crystals

 Piezoelectric ceramics, such as lithium niobate, gallium arsenide, zinc oxide, aluminium
nitride and lead zirconate-titanate (PZT)
 Polymer-film piezoelectrics, such as polyvinylidene fluoride(PVDF)

PZT CERAMICS:

The most commonly used type of piezoceramics, Lead Zirconate Titanates (PZTs), are solid solutions of
lead zirconate and lead titanate, often doped with other elements to obtain specific properties. These
ceramics are manufactured by mixing together proportional amounts of lead, zirconium and titanium
oxide powders and heating the mixture to around 800 to 1000C. They then react to form perovskite PZT
powder. This powder is mixed with a binder and sintered into the desired shape. During the cooling
process, the material undergoes a phase transition from paraelectric to ferroelectric and the cubic unit
cell becomes tetragonal. As a result, the unit cell becomes elongated in one direction and has a
permanent dipole moment oriented along its long axis (c-axis). The unpoled ceramic consists of many
randomly oriented domains and thus has no net polarization.Application of a high electric field has the
effect of aligning most of the unit cells as closely parallel to the applied field as possible. This process is
called poling and it imparts a permanent net polarisation to the ceramic. The material in this state
exhibits both direct and converse piezoelectric effects.PZT sensors exhibit most of the characteristics of
ceramics, namely a high elastic modulus, brittleness and low tensile strength. The material itself is
mechanically isotropic, and by virtue of the poling process, is assumed transversely isotropic in the plane
normal to the poling direction as far as piezoelectric properties are concerned.The less-sensitive, natural,
single-crystal materials (gallium phosphate, quartz, tourmaline) have a higher – when carefully handled,
almost unlimited – long term stability. There are also new single-crystal materials commercially available
such as Lead Magnesium Niobate-Lead Titanate (PMN-PT). These materials offer improved sensitivity
over PZT but have a lower maximum operating temperature and are currently more expensive to
manufacture.

PZT FIBERS:

The nature of the ceramic monolithic piezoelectric material makes them brittle and vulnerable to accidental
breakage during handling and bonding procedures as well as in the service intended. In addition, they have
poor ability to conform to curved surfaces and are very dense and stiff causing mass loading and localized
stiffness. These limitations have encouraged researchers to develop alternative methods of manufacturing
the piezoelectric ceramics in order to make them more suitable for the next generation of piezoelectric
applications.

In order to resolve the inadequacy of the monolithic piezoelectric ceramic material for many applications,
the idea of using a composite material consisting of an active piezoelectric ceramic fibrous phase
embedded in a polymeric matrix phase has been investigated by a number of researchers. Piezo ceramic
fibres have been produced through a patented injection moulding process. In addition to this added
strength of the base material, the flexibility of the polymer matrix allows the piezoelectric ceramic fibres to
have greater conformability to curved surfaces and provides a protective shell around the piezoelectric
material. This polymer shell allows the piezoelectric-fibre to withstand impacts and harsh environments far
better than monolithic piezoelectric materials. The result of configuring the piezoelectric fibre inside a
polymer matrix is an actuator that can be incorporated into or bonded to more realistic structures.

This soft moulding process holds many advantages over the previously used die-and-fill, injection moulding
or dicing techniques, due to the moulds being reusable, allowing thousands of identical actuators to be
made. In addition, the fabrication is relatively easy and cost effective because of the simplicity of the mould
construction when compared to the other options for fibre construction. Once the brittle fibres are formed
a polymer matrix is added to the remaining spaces to protect the fibres from breakage. Subsequent to this
process is the addition of metal electrodes for poling of the device, later to be used as a means of applying
an electric field or measuring the current produced during sensing.

Piezoelectricity is a revolutionary source for “GREEN ENERGY”.Flexible piezoelectric materials are attractive
for power harvesting applications because of their ability to withstand large amounts of strain.Convert the
ambient vibration energy surrounding them into electrical energy.Electrical energy can then be used to
power other devices or stored for later use.