Screen-printed piezoelectric shoe-insole energy harvester using an improved flexible PZT-polymer composites

Abstract

This paper reports improved screen-printed piezoelectric composites that can be printed on fabrics or flexible substrates. The materials are flexible and are processed at lower temperature (130°C). One main PZT particle size (2μm) was mixed separately with smaller piezoelectric particles (0.1, 0.3 and 0.8μm) with different weight ratios to investigate the piezoelectric property d₃₃. The blended PZT powder was then mixed with 40% polymer binder and printed on Alumina substrates. The applied poling field, temperature and time were 8MV/m, 160°C and 10min, respectively. The optimum material gives a d₃₃ of 36pC/N with particle sizes of 2μm and 0.8μm and mixed percentages of 82% and 18%, respectively. A screen-printed piezoelectric shoe-insoles (PSI) has been developed as a self-powered force mapping sensor. The PSI was simulated, fabricated and tested. ANSYS results show that one element of PSI sole can produce an open- circuit voltage of 3V when a human of average weight of 70kg makes a gait strike. Experimental results show that one element produced 2V which is less than the simulated results because of the reduction of poling field for the practical device.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Russel Torah: orcid.org/0000-0002-5598-2860

ORCID for Dibin Zhu: orcid.org/0000-0003-0517-3974

ORCID for John Tudor: orcid.org/0000-0003-1179-9455

ORCID for Steve Beeby: orcid.org/0000-0002-0800-1759

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