Article

3D Optical Printing of Piezoelectric Nanoparticle–Polymer Composite Materials

Materials Science and Engineering and Department of NanoEngineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, United States
ACS Nano, 2014, 8 (10), pp 9799–9806
DOI: 10.1021/nn503268f
Publication Date (Web): July 21, 2014
Copyright © 2014 American Chemical Society
*Address correspondence to dsirbuly@ucsd.edu.

Abstract

Abstract Image

Here we demonstrate that efficient piezoelectric nanoparticle–polymer composite materials can be optically printed into three-dimensional (3D) microstructures using digital projection printing. Piezoelectric polymers were fabricated by incorporating barium titanate (BaTiO3, BTO) nanoparticles into photoliable polymer solutions such as polyethylene glycol diacrylate and exposing to digital optical masks that could be dynamically altered to generate user-defined 3D microstructures. To enhance the mechanical-to-electrical conversion efficiency of the composites, the BTO nanoparticles were chemically modified with acrylate surface groups, which formed direct covalent linkages with the polymer matrix under light exposure. The composites with a 10% mass loading of the chemically modified BTO nanoparticles showed piezoelectric coefficients (d33) of ∼40 pC/N, which were over 10 times larger than composites synthesized with unmodified BTO nanoparticles and over 2 times larger than composites containing unmodified BTO nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes to boost mechanical stress transfer efficiencies. These results not only provide a tool for fabricating 3D piezoelectric polymers but lay the groundwork for creating highly efficient piezoelectric polymer materials via nanointerfacial tuning.

Analytical and spectroscopic (XRD, FTIR, UV–vis) data, electronic diagrams of piezoelectric test equipment, and piezoelectric output of a microstructured array are available free of charge via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.

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Received 16 June 2014
Date accepted 21 July 2014
Published online 21 July 2014
Published in print 28 October 2014
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