Designing Highly Polar Self-Assembled Molecular Piezoelectric Materials

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Non-Technical AbstractRecent advances in flexible electronics offer tremendous promise for lightweight devices, enabling applications from mobile computing to medical implants. Simultaneously, the demand for portable energy solutions has risen, since integrated energy storage or conversion is critical to power these technologies. Mechanical energy is ubiquitous but challenging to use effectively. Capturing this inexpensive and readily available energy source by converting between mechanical force and electrical current can lead to innovative advances such as self-powered sensors for touch, vibration or force, or flexible touch screens. Existing materials used to harvest mechanical energy are often inflexible, brittle, and hard to process. The vast potential applications, coupled with key limitations of current materials, create a compelling need for a new perspective on the conversion of mechanical energy, from the bottom up. With support from the Solid State and Materials Chemistry program, this project focuses on fundamental understanding and optimizing these materials first as molecules, then as single molecular layers, and then in films and devices. The result will be a new family of flexible, compressible materials for microscale energy generation and energy harvesting. Beyond the research component, the project provides training to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students in both the interdisciplinary field of nanomaterials and the combination of experimental and computational research.Technical AbstractThis collaborative project integrates synthesis, characterization, and simulation-driven materials design to develop a family of molecular solid piezoelectric materials for energy harvesting applications. The central hypothesis underlying the research is that directed self-assembly of conformationally-driven molecular piezoelectrics based on peptides and related bio-inspired oligomers leads to materials with far superior characteristics (piezo response, electrical properties, flexibility) than current piezo materials. The project builds on an existing collaboration and strong preliminary results that predict high piezo response from conformational changes of polar molecules in an applied electric field. The project advances the synthesis, modeling, and characterization of new electroresponsive bio-inspired materials. At each stage, the research identifies responsive molecular targets as well as the properties needed to produce optimal layers and films. These results contribute to the fundamental understanding of electromechanical properties of biomaterials, including accurate geometries of molecules in the condensed phase surrounded by nanoscale electric fields, such as ions or dipoles.