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Researchers at IIT Bombay have made a material that has better piezoelectric properties than the ones in use today. Piezo materials produce an electrical voltage under mechanical stress or expand when applied with an electrical current.
Prof Susmita Naskar and her team at IIT Bombay have developed a material with improved piezoelectric properties, called ‘graphene-reinforced piezoelectric composite’ or GRPC. It has fibres of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) and graphene nanoparticles embedded in an epoxy base. PZT is a conventional piezoelectric material.
The researchers performed experiments to compare their GRPC with conventional PZT and found that GRPC was better.
They saw a “significant increase in the piezoelectric response of GRPC in all directions”. This could be useful in artificial muscles of biomedical devices that require movements in multiple directions, says Naskar.
This study can help make more effective piezoelectric-based devices in the future. Building robots or satellites requires light materials that are multipurpose, and the researchers envisage that GRPC could be a very good fit for that.
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