Evaluation of performance of polyamide/lead zirconate titanate composite for energy harvesters and actuators

By means of experimental tools, we have studied the effect of lead zirconate titanate volume fraction introduced in polyamide-6/lead zirconate titanate composites on dielectric, piezoelectric, mechanical, and structural properties. As the first result, we found that the insertion of lead zirconate titanate particles makes the dielectric permittivity of the polyamide-6 matrix increases from 10 to 95.8. The dielectric property studies reveal that under an electrical field of 1？kV the remnant polarization is also increased from 0.17 to 0.4, this behavior is related to both the increase of volume fraction of lead zirconate titanate from 20% to 40% and the piezoelectric coefficient changes proportionally with that of volume fraction of lead zirconate titanate. Furthermore, piezoelectric activity increases with lead zirconate titanate particle size at a range where there is a lower order of magnitude. Finally, the uniform dispersion of the ceramic lead zirconate titanate particles in polyamide matrix has been confirmed by scanning electron microscopy analysis. The performances reached by polyamide-6/lead zirconate titanate composites open new horizons for energy harvesting and actuators