PVDF with carbon nanotubes and buckyballs clusters could improve electricity generating properties

16-Apr-15

Carbon nanotubes and “buckyball” clusters in PVDF material to improve its electricity-generating properties have been successfully incorporated by Walter Voit, Ph.D., of the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) along with co-researchers. There is a strange characteristic of a plastic used in tubing and filters. Electricity can be generated during elongation or compression. Until now, this ability has been used only in a minor way, however, researchers are twisting plastic fibres to generate more electricity for a broad application range spanning from artificial muscles to green energy. Voit, along with Shashank Priya, Ph.D., at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, has already made new advancements toward this target. They have dominated efforts to develop polymer-based 'soft' energy harvesting materials as part of the Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems, a National Science Foundation (NSF) program aimed at developing motion-control and energy-capture technologies. A doctoral student in Voit’s lab, Cary Baur, has found a way to deploy organic nanostructures called buckyballs and single-walled carbon nanotubes into PVDF fibers in order to double its piezoelectric performance. Buckyballs are small carbon atom spheres. They and their cylindrical counterparts have interesting characteristics, which are being used by scientists in a variety of ways. It was observed that in Voit’s materials, the carbon nanostructures even out and improve the electric field strength. This has resulted in the PVDF-carbon hybrids becoming the most ideal piezoelectric composites reported till date in scientific documents, according to Voit. In order to transform this yarn-like configuration into artificial muscles, or materials capable of relaxing or contracting in response to an electronic current, Voit had to make them more powerful.