Stretchable piezo‐electric energy harvesting device with high durability using carbon nanomaterials with different structure and their synergism with molybdenum disulfide

Abstract

AbstractRecently, polymer composite based stretchable piezo‐electric energy harvesting device have attracted a great attention in composite industry. At laboratory scale, these piezo‐electric devices have ability to generate impressive voltage (~8 V) with high durability (>0.5 million cycles) depending upon nature of the material used in electrode and substrate. In this work, composites were prepared by mixing room temperature vulcanized silicone rubber (RTV‐SR) and nanofillers such as multi‐wall carbon nanotube (MWCNT), nano‐carbon black (nano‐CB), graphite nanoplatelets (GNP), in single or hybrid with molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). These fillers differentiate on basis of their structure ranging from 0‐dimensional (0‐D) to 3‐D. The effects of these structures on mechanical properties are demonstrated. Among them, MWCNT with 1‐D, tube shape morphology, high aspect ratio of 65 shows dominating mechanical properties even at 2 per hundred parts of rubber (phr) loading followed by nano‐CB, GNP at 8 phr and MoS2 at 2 phr. A synergistic effect in mechanical properties between hybrid fillers such as tensile strength and fracture strain was demonstrated. In the end, the composites were tested for piezo‐electric energy generation and durability cycles for the best candidate such as MWCNT was tested for up to 0.5 million cycles was demonstrated.