Piezoelectric materials capable of converting between mechanical and electrical energy have a great range of potential applications in micro- and nano-scale smart devices; however, their performance tends to be greatly degraded when reduced to a thin film due to the large clamping force by the substrate and surrounding materials. Herein, we report an effective method for synthesizing isolated p...

Stiffness relations for voltage-dependent contact mechanics of piezoelectric material are derived for an indenter of arbitrary planform under normal force, centrally or noncentrally applied, and electric charge distribution at the base. Relations between indentation depth, indentation force, electric potential and electric charge are explicitly given in terms of indenter’s geometry and piezoele...

We use a first-principles rational-design approach to demonstrate the potential of semiconducting half-Heusler compounds as a previously unrecognized class of piezoelectric materials. We perform a high-throughput scan of a large number of compounds, testing for insulating character and calculating structural, dielectric, and piezoelectric properties. Our results provide guidance for the experim...

Strain control of epitaxial films using piezoelectric substrates has recently attracted significant scientific interest. Despite its potential as a powerful test bed for strain-related physical phenomena and strain-driven electronic, magnetic, and optical technologies, detailed studies on the efficiency and uniformity of piezoelectric strain transfer are scarce. Here, we demonstrate that full a...

This work demonstrates the potential of porous BaTiO3 for piezoelectric sensor and energy-harvesting applications by manufacture of materials, detailed characterisation and application of new models. Ferroelectric macro-porous BaTiO3 ceramics for piezoelectric applications are manufactured for a range of relative densities, α = 0.30-0.95, using the burned out polymer spheres method. The piezoel...

Piezoelectric energy harvesting using cantilever-type structures has been extensively investigated due to its potential application in providing power supplies for wireless sensor networks, but the low output power has been a bottleneck for its further commercialization. To improve the power conversion capability, a piezoelectric beam with different electrode coverage ratios is studied theoreti...

We have demonstrated an innovative approach to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy by piezoelectric zinc oxide nanowire (NW) arrays. The mechanism of the nanogenerator (NG) relies on the coupling of piezoelectric and semiconducting dual properties of ZnO as well as the elegant rectifying function of the Schottky barrier formed between the metal tip and the NW. Alexe et al. have rec...

This article presents an exact solution for an axisymmetric functionally graded piezoelectric (FGP) rotating disk with constant thickness subjected to an electric field and thermal gradient. All mechanical, thermal and piezoelectric properties except for Poisson’s ratio are taken in the form of power functions in radial direction. After solving the heat transfer equation, first a symmetric dist...

The vibration analysis is an important step in the design and optimization of microsensors. In most of the cases, COMSOL software is employed to consider the size-dependency on the dynamic behavior in the MEMS sensors. In this paper, the Modified Couple Stress Theory (MCST) is used to capture the size effect on dynamic behavior in a microsensor with two layers of the silicon and piezoelectric. ...