(Press-News.org) A team of researchers led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has developed a new material, that when electricity is applied to it, can flex and bend forty times more than its competitors, opening the way to better micro machines.
Conversely, when it is bent, it generates electricity very effectively and could be used for better "energy harvesting" - potentially recharging batteries in gadgets just from everyday movements.
The novel material is both electrostrictive and piezoelectric. Its electrostrictive properties means it can change shape when an electric current is applied, while piezoelectric means the material can convert pressure into electric charges.
When an electric field is applied, the atoms that make up electrostrictive materials shift, causing the material to deform and flex. When piezoelectrics are compressed, the pressure is converted to electric charges which accumulate in the material.
The scientists found that when an electric field is applied, the new hybrid material could be strained up to 22 per cent, the highest strain reported in a piezoelectric material so far. This far surpasses conventional piezoelectric materials that only deform up to 0.5 per cent when a current is passed through it. The new material is also more energy-efficient than other piezoelectric and electrostrictive materials.
Piezoelectric materials are commonly used in guitars, loudspeakers, sensors and electric motors. For instance, a piezoelectric pick-up is a device used in an electric guitar to convert the vibrations from the strings into an electric signal, which is then processed for music recording or to be amplified through loudspeakers.
Ferroelectric crystals were first discovered in 1920 and have been used to make piezoelectrics for over 70 years, as they are easily integrated into electrical devices.
However, they are brittle and inflexible, bending only 0.5 per cent, which largely limits their application in electronic devices such as actuators (parts that convert an electric control signal into mechanical motion, for example, a valve that opens and closes).
Some ferroelectrics also contain lead, which is toxic, and its presence in piezoelectric devices is one of the reasons why electronic waste is challenging to recycle. Traditional ferroelectrics such as perovskite oxides are also unsuitable for flexible electrical devices that are in contact with the skin, such as wearable biomedical devices that track heart rate.
Published in the scientific journal Nature Materials last month, the new material was created at NTU by Professor Fan Hong Jin from the School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences and his team, including his PhD student Mr Hu Yuzhong who is the first author of this paper. Also part of the team is Professor Junling Wang from the Southern University of Science and Technology, China, a former NTU professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering.
Prof Fan said, "Being more than 40 times more flexible than similar electrostrictive materials, the new ferroelectric material may be used in highly efficient devices such as actuators and sensors that flex when an electric field is applied. With its superior piezoelectric properties, the material can also be used in mechanical devices that harvest energy when bent, which will be useful to recharge wearable devices.
"We think we can substantially improve on this performance in future by further optimising the chemical composition, and we believe this type of material could play a key role in the development of wearable devices for the Internet of Things (IOT), one of the key technologies enabling the 4th Industrial Revolution."
Developing a flexible ferroelectric material
To develop a flexible ferroelectric material, the researchers modified the chemical structure of a hybrid ferroelectric compound C6H5N(CH3)3CdCl3, or PCCF in short, which can potentially bend up to a hundred times more than traditional ferroelectrics.
To increase the material's range of movement further, the scientists modified the chemical makeup of the compound by substituting some of its chlorine (Cl) atoms for bromine (Br), which has a similar size to chlorine, to weaken the chemical bonds at specific points in the structure. This made the material more flexible without affecting its piezoelectric qualities.
The new material is easy to manufacture, requiring only solution-based processing in which the crystal forms as the liquid evaporates, unlike typical ferroelectric crystals that require the use of high-powered lasers and energy to form.
When an electric field was applied to the new PCCF compound, the atoms in it shifted substantially more than the atoms in most conventional ferroelectrics, straining up to 22 per cent far more than conventional piezoelectric materials.
INFORMATION:
Other authors of the paper include researchers from NTU's School of Materials Science and Engineering, Facility for Analysis, Characterisation, Testing and Simulation (FACTS), Soochow University and Southern University of Science and Technology, China.
About Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and Graduate colleges. It also has a medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, established jointly with Imperial College London.
NTU is also home to world-renowned autonomous institutes - the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering - and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).
Ranked amongst the world's top universities by QS, NTU has also been named the world's top young university for the last seven years. The University's main campus is frequently listed among the Top 15 most beautiful university campuses in the world and it has 57 Green Mark-certified (equivalent to LEED-certified) building projects, of which 95% are certified Green Mark Platinum. Apart from its main campus, NTU also has a campus in Singapore's healthcare district.
Under the NTU Smart Campus vision, the University harnesses the power of digital technology and tech-enabled solutions to support better learning and living experiences, the discovery of new knowledge, and the sustainability of resources.
For more information, visit http://www.ntu.edu.sg
Although SGLT-2 inhibitors are central to the treatment of diabetes, their exact mode of action was hitherto unknown. In a study conducted by a research group led by Peter Wolf, Martin Krssak and Michael Krebs from MedUni Vienna's Department of Medicine III, magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) was used to show that there is a direct correlation between the elimination of glucose via the kidneys and new glucose production in the liver. A single dose of the SGLT-2 inhibitor dapagliflozin gives rise to a beneficial regulation mechanism, in which glucose loss due to drug-induced SGLT-2 inhibition is exactly balanced out by an equal increase in new glucose production in the liver. The study has been published in the leading journal Diabetes Care.
Dapagliflozin is a drug from the group ...
Researchers at the Kobe University Graduate School of Science have revealed that when captive-bred juvenile red-spotted masu salmon are released into natural streams, very few individuals become migrants.
Red-spotted masu salmon was an important fish species for the fishing industry in the rivers of west Japan, however in recent years their numbers are declining rapidly. The results of this research offer important suggestions for stocking practices and the management of river environments.
The research group consisted of graduate school students TANAKA Tatsuya and UEDA Rui and Associate Professor SATO Takuya. The results were published in Biology Letters ...
[Background]
The human body consists of about 60 trillion cells that are renewed day by day to maintain homeostasis of body tissues. In particular, cells of the digestive tract are renewed completely within several weeks thanks to vigorous proliferation where tissue stem cells of every tissue play critical roles in supplying those cells. Tissue stem cells play essential roles in various phenomena such as histogenesis and recovery from damage by producing differentiated cells while dividing. They do this by producing identical cells (self-renewal) or by differentiating into other types of cells. The research team led by Profs. Murakami and Barker of the Cancer Research Institute, Kanazawa University revealed ...
Betelgeuse is normally one of the brightest, most recognizable stars of the winter sky, marking the left shoulder of the constellation Orion. But lately, it has been behaving strangely: an unprecedentedly large drop in its brightness has been observed in early 2020 (Figure 1), which has prompted speculation that Betelgeuse may be about to explode.
To find out more, an international team of scientists, including Ken'ichi Nomoto at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), conducted a rigorous examination of Betelgeuse. They concluded that the star is in the early core helium-burning phase (which is more than 100,000 ...
A study reveals the genetic factors that may expose or protect people with Down syndrome from SARS-CoV-2 infection, as well as the prognosis of COVID-19.
Their findings, which are published in the journal Scientific Reports, follow previous studies showing a tenfold mortality risk of COVID-19 for people with Down syndrome, adding further evidence to boost existing calls for priority vaccination of the medically vulnerable group.
The researchers analysed all publicly available Down syndrome transcriptomic data to uncover alterations that might affect SARS-CoV-2's infection and disease progression.
TMPRSS2, a gene that codes for an enzyme critical for aiding the entry of SARS-CoV-2 in human cells, had 60% higher levels ...
A study carried out at the University of Helsinki indicates that agricultural activity confuses the mechanisms that regulate the occurrence of plant diseases in nature. A wider variety of virus species was found in meadows close to agricultural fields compared to those located in natural surroundings, with the richness of plant species having no effect on the number of virus species. However, maintaining biodiversity is worthwhile, as plant richness did reduce the number of viral infections in the meadows.
An increasing share of the global land area is used for agricultural purposes, with more and more of the remaining area located at the boundary between agricultural and natural land, also known as the agro-ecological ...
As part of a worldwide collaboration, Carnegie Mellon University chemists have helped discover that iodic acids can rapidly form aerosol particles in the atmosphere, giving scientists more knowledge of how iodine emissions can contribute to cloud formation and climate change.
"Essentially all uncertainty around climate change and the atmosphere has something to do with particles and cloud droplets," said Neil Donahue, Thomas Lord University Professor of Chemistry and a professor in the departments of Chemical Engineering, and Engineering and Public Policy. The Donahue ...
Face masks mandates have led people to spend less time at home, but whether this has exposed Americans to more risk is still a question, according to a new study published Thursday in Scientific Reports.
Using anonymized location data from smart devices, the study, conducted by Yale School of the Environment Professor Eli Fenichel, Youpei Yan, YSE postdoctoral associate, Colorado State University Assistant Professor Jude Bayham and Aaron Richter, a Yale research affiliate, examined changes in behavior of residents two weeks before and two weeks after mask mandates were implemented in regions of the United States.
The study found that residents spent between 11-24 more minutes outside their homes after a facemask mandate was issued, even as COVID-19 rates were rising in the U.S. ...
A new study of autism risk genes by UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley scientists implicates disruption in prenatal neurogenesis - a process in which specialized "progenitor" cells give rise to new brain cells - in the development of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). The study also shows that estrogen, perhaps in a form produced within brain cells, can protect against this disruption and steer the brain on a normal course of development.
The most striking findings in the study, published on January 25, 2021 in Neuron, were derived from experiments using embryos of the western clawed frog (Xenopus tropicalis), a species prized by biologists for the unique insights it offers into development. Human genes involved in development ...
Prompted by the need to improve conventional treatments for people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1), a team from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) has identified a therapeutic approach to restore the effectiveness of immune cells. The study, led by doctoral student Hamza Loucif and Professor Julien van Grevenynghe, was published in the journal Autophagy.
Most people infected with HIV-1 require daily antiretroviral therapy to control the infection. These drugs cause significant side effects without fully restoring the normal functioning of the immune system. ...
