Abstract
Biological piezoelectric materials are beginning to gain attention for their huge potential as eco-friendly energy harvesting materials. In particular, simple amino acid and peptide crystal assemblies are demonstrating large voltage outputs under applied force, and high sensitivity when detecting vibrations. Here we utilise Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations to quantitatively predict the energy harvesting properties of two understudied proteinogenic amino acid crystals: L-Arginine and L-Valine. The work highlights the ability of quantum mechanical calculations to screen crystals as high-performance energy harvesters, and demonstrates the capability of small biological crystals as eco-friendly piezoelectric materials. L-Arginine is predicted to have a maximum piezoelectric voltage constant of gij= 274 mV m/N, with a Young’s Modulus of E = 17.1 GPa. L-Valine has a maximum predicted piezoelectric voltage constant of gij= 62 mV m/N, with a calculated Young’s Modulus of E = 19.8 GPa.
Highlights
Piezoelectric materials have long been utilised for their ability to linearly interconvert electrical and mechanical energy
It is shown that both L-Arginine and L-Valine single crystals are predicted to have piezoelectric voltage constants that exceed those of piezoelectric ceramics, with L-Arginine having voltage constants that far exceed piezoelectric polymers
This elastic constants indicate that these amino acids could be used as rigid single crystal components, or as flexible thin films for a variety of energy harvesting applications
Summary
Piezoelectric materials have long been utilised for their ability to linearly interconvert electrical and mechanical energy. Arginine has been crystallized as L-arginine 4-nitrophenolate 4-nitrophenol dehydrate (LAPP) (Wang et al, 2011), L-arginine hydrofluoride (Pal and Kar, 2002), and L-arginine hydrochloride monohydrate (Kalaiselvi et al, 2008) for non-linear optical applications, as has L-Valine (Moitra and Kar, 2010) These biomolecular-crystal assemblies can be grown at room temperature with no byproducts, and do not require an external electric field to induce piezoelectricity, unlike PZT and other piezoceramics. Both the raw material and fabrication cost of arginine and valine are a tiny fraction of that of current commercial piezoelectrics which rely on heavy processing of heavy metals and their oxides, which carries a large financial and environmental burden (Ibn-Mohammed et al, 2018)
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