. 24/7 Space News .
TECH SPACE
Mechanical engineers develop process to 3D print piezoelectric materials
by Staff Writers
Blacksburg VA (SPX) Jan 22, 2019

A printed flexible sheet of piezoelectric smart material

The piezoelectric materials that inhabit everything from our cell phones to musical greeting cards may be getting an upgrade thanks to work discussed in the journal Nature Materials released online Jan 21.

Xiaoyu 'Rayne' Zheng, assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering, and a member of the Macromolecules Innovation Institute, and his team have developed methods to 3D print piezoelectric materials that can be custom-designed to convert movement, impact and stress from any directions to electrical energy.

"Piezoelectric materials convert strain and stress into electric charges," Zheng explained.

The piezoelectric materials come in only a few defined shapes and are made of brittle crystal and ceramic - the kind that require a clean room to manufacture. Zheng's team has developed a technique to 3D print these materials so they are not restricted by shape or size.

The material can also be activated - providing the next generation of intelligent infrastructures and smart materials for tactile sensing, impact and vibration monitoring, energy harvesting, and other applications.

Unleash the freedom to design piezoelectrics
Piezoelectric materials were originally discovered in the 19th century. Since then the advances in manufacturing technology has led to the requirement of clean-rooms and a complex procedure that produces films and blocks which are connected to electronics after machining. The expensive process and the inherent brittleness of the material, has limited the ability to maximize the material's potential.

Zheng's team developed a model that allows them to manipulate and design arbitrary piezoelectric constants, resulting in the material generating electric charge movement in response to incoming forces and vibrations from any direction, via a set of 3D printable topologies.

Unlike conventional piezoelectrics where electric charge movements are prescribed by the intrinsic crystals, the new method allows users to prescribe and program voltage responses to be magnified, reversed or suppressed in any direction.

"We have developed a design method and printing platform to freely design the sensitivity and operational modes of piezoelectric materials," Zheng said.

"By programming the 3D active topology, you can achieve pretty much any combination of piezoelectric coefficients within a material, and use them as transducers and sensors that are not only flexible and strong, but also respond to pressure, vibrations and impacts via electric signals that tell the location, magnitude and direction of the impacts within any location of these materials."

3D printing of piezoelectrics, sensors and transducers
A factor in current piezoelectric fabrication is the natural crystal used. At the atomic level, the orientation of atoms are fixed. Zheng's team has produced a substitute that mimics the crystal but allows for the lattice orientation to be altered by design.

"We have synthesized a class of highly sensitive piezoelectric inks that can be sculpted into complex three-dimensional features with ultraviolet light. The inks contain highly concentrated piezoelectric nanocrystals bonded with UV-sensitive gels, which form a solution - a milky mixture like melted crystal - that we print with a high-resolution digital light 3D printer," Zheng said.

The team demonstrated the 3D printed materials at a scale measuring fractions of the diameter of a human hair. "We can tailor the architecture to make them more flexible and use them, for instance, as energy harvesting devices, wrapping them around any arbitrary curvature," Zheng said. "We can make them thick, and light, stiff or energy-absorbing."

The material has sensitivities 5-fold higher than flexible piezoelectric polymers. The stiffness and shape of the material can be tuned and produced as a thin sheet resembling a strip of gauze, or as a stiff block.

"We have a team making them into wearable devices, like rings, insoles, and fitting them into a boxing glove where we will be able to record impact forces and monitor the health of the user," said Zheng.

"The ability to achieve the desired mechanical, electrical and thermal properties will significantly reduce the time and effort needed to develop practical materials," said Shashank Priya, associate VP for research at Penn State and former professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech.

New applications
The team has printed and demonstrated smart materials wrapped around curved surfaces, worn on hands and fingers to convert motion, and harvest the mechanical energy, but the applications go well beyond wearables and consumer electronics.

Zheng sees the technology as a leap into robotics, energy harvesting, tactile sensing and intelligent infrastructure, where a structure is made entirely with piezoelectric material, sensing impacts, vibrations and motions, and allowing for those to be monitored and located.

The team has printed a small smart bridge to demonstrate its applicability to sensing the locations of dropping impacts, as well as its magnitude, while robust enough to absorb the impact energy. The team also demonstrated their application of a smart transducer that converts underwater vibration signals to electric voltages.

"Traditionally, if you wanted to monitor the internal strength of a structure, you would need to have a lot of individual sensors placed all over the structure, each with a number of leads and connectors," said Huachen Cui, a doctoral student with Zheng and first author of the Nature Materials paper. "Here, the structure itself is the sensor - it can monitor itself."

+ Watch a related video here


Related Links
Virginia Tech
Space Technology News - Applications and Research


Thanks for being there;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5+ Billed Monthly


paypal only
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal


TECH SPACE
Penn engineers 3D print smart objects with 'embodied logic'
Philadelphia PA (SPX) Jan 17, 2019
Even without a brain or a nervous system, the Venus flytrap appears to make sophisticated decisions about when to snap shut on potential prey, as well as to open when it has accidentally caught something it can't eat. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science have taken inspiration from these sorts of systems. Using stimuli-responsive materials and geometric principles, they have designed structures that have "embodied logic." Through their physical ... read more

Comment using your Disqus, Facebook, Google or Twitter login.



Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle

TECH SPACE
Beans to be next vegetable on astronauts' menu by 2021

Moon sees first cotton-seed sprout

Space dreams: Alum Frank Bunger's quest to make space tourism a reality

NASA Astronaut Hague Who Failed to Reach ISS May Make One-Year Flight

TECH SPACE
SLS liquid hydrogen tank test article loaded into test stand

Closing The Space Launch Information Gap

SpaceX laying off 10 percent of workforce

Mechanisms are Critical to All Space Vehicles

TECH SPACE
UK tests self driving robots for Mars

ExoMars mission has good odds of finding life on Mars if life exists.

Mars Express gets festive: A winter wonderland on Mars

Over Six Months Without Word From Opportunity

TECH SPACE
China to deepen lunar exploration: space expert

China launches Zhongxing-2D satellite

China welcomes world's scientists to collaborate in lunar exploration

In space, the US sees a rival in China

TECH SPACE
A new era of global aircraft surveillance is on the horizon as Aireon completes system deployment

Competition for Young Space Entrepreneurs launched

Australia's 'space city' hosts rising stars from around the globe

SpaceX Falcon 9 completes Iridium Next launch campaign

TECH SPACE
Additive manufacturing reflects fundamental metallurgical principles to create materials

Proposed engineering method could help make buildings and bridges safer

Kiel physicists discover new effect in the interaction of plasmas with solids

Nebraska leads $11 million study to develop radiation exposure drugs

TECH SPACE
Double star system flips planet-forming disk into pole position

First comprehensive, interactive tool to track SETI searches

Potential for life on planet around Barnard's Star

Nature's magnifying glass reveals unexpected intermediate mass exoplanets

TECH SPACE
Scientist Anticipated "Snowman" Asteroid Appearance

New Ultima Thule Discoveries from NASA's New Horizons

New Horizons unveils Ultima and Thule as a binary Kuiper

NASA says faraway world Ultima Thule shaped like 'snowman'









The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.