SBIR Phase I: Disruptive Performance From Engineered Piezoelectric Organic Polymer Nanocomposites:An Inventive Approach To New Electrical and Mechanical Energy Conversion Materials

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目将开发四聚体的一项新发现，该发现表明，在可聚合聚合物中添加非常少量的纳米管可以将复合材料的压电性能提高6倍。这种被称为压电性的效应是一种替代能源，可以将机械运动转化为电能，反之亦然。四聚体不仅将探索将这些纳米复合材料转化为用于传感器、致动器和废热回收的经典聚合物薄膜，还将探索新型电纺智能织物，用于减振甚至伤口愈合。这将极大地扩大压电聚合物的商业影响。压电材料是一个价值3.4亿美元的美国市场(全球价值9亿美元)，每年以9%的速度增长，应用领域包括换能器、致动器、传感器、能量收集和减振。与太阳能、风能、生物质、波浪和燃料电池一样，压电是众多替代能源之一，它们将继续对美国的商业和社会基础发挥越来越重要的作用。化石燃料的成本、环境影响、可获得性以及更难获得政治上的外国来源，都将要求在未来20年开发替代能源。虽然压电式能量转换在大众媒体中很少被提及，但实际上它的用途比上面提到的要多。利用目前可用的技术，这些商业应用的增长速度已经是目前美国GNP的两倍(9%)，销售额超过3.4亿美元。增长的增加将意味着在传感器、执行器、传感器、能量采集、减振和智能聚合物等经典应用中的性能改进将带来更广泛的影响收益。拟议的颠覆性技术将允许扩展到新的公共利益领域，如余热回收和伤口愈合。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop a new discovery by Tetramer which indicates that the addition of a very small amount of nanotubes to poleable polymers can provide an 6X increase to the piezoelectric performance of the composite. This effect, called piezoelectricity, is an alternative energy source which can convert mechanical motion into electrical energy and vice versa. Tetramer will explore the conversion of these nanocomposite materials into not only classical polymer films for use in transducers, actuators, and waste heat recovery, but also explore new types of electrospun smart fabrics for applications such as vibration damping and even wound healing. This could greatly expand the commercial impact of piezopolymers. Piezoelectric materials are a $340 million market US ($900 Million global) growing at 9% per year, with applications such as transducers, actuators, sensors, energy harvesting, and vibration dampening. Piezo electricity is one of many alternative energy sources along with solar, wind, biomass, wave and fuel cells which will continue to play an increasingly important role for both the business and social foundation of the US. Fossil fuels costs, environmental impact, availability and more difficult political foreign source access are going to demand that alternative sources be developed over the next twenty years. Piezoelectric energy conversions, although rarely mentioned in the popular press, are actually more versatile than those mentioned above. Using currently available technology, these commercial applications are already growing at double (9%) the current US GNP with sales of over $340 million. Increased growth will mean broader impact benefits from improved performance in classical applications such as transducers, actuators, sensors, energy harvesting, vibration dampening, and smart polymers. The disruptive technology proposed will allow expansion into new areas of public benefit such as waste heat recovery and wound healing.