Bond engineering of molecular ferroelectrics renders soft and high-performance piezoelectric energy harvesting materials.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36153340.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-33325-6 and PMC identifier 9509372.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Piezoelectric materials convert mechanical stress to electrical energy and thus are widely used in energy harvesting and wearable devices. However, in the piezoelectric family, there are two pairs of properties that improving one of them will generally compromises the other, which limits their applications. The first pair is piezoelectric strain and voltage constant, and the second is piezoelectric performance and mechanical softness. Here, we report a molecular bond weakening strategy to mitigate these issues in organic-inorganic hybrid piezoelectrics. By introduction of large-size halide elements, the metal-halide bonds can be effectively weakened, leading to a softening effect on bond strength and reduction in polarization switching barrier. The obtained solid solution C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>5</sub>N(CH<sub>3</sub>)<sub>3</sub>CdBr<sub>2</sub>Cl<sub>0.75</sub>I<sub>0.25</sub> exhibits excellent piezoelectric constants (d<sub>33</sub> = 367 pm/V, g<sub>33</sub> = 3595 × 10<sup>-3</sup> Vm/N), energy harvesting property (power density is 11 W/m<sup>2</sup>), and superior mechanical softness (0.8 GPa), promising this hybrid as high-performance soft piezoelectrics.