Hierarchical PbZrxTi1–xO3 Nanowires for Vibrational Energy Harvesting

Perovskite piezoelectric material nanostructures have gained immense interest in the energy harvesting community due to their ability of converting mechanical energy into electric power in a much more efficient manner. In this paper, we first successfully synthesized PbZrxTi1–xO3 (PZT) nanowires with unique hierarchical nanostructures that are ～100 nm in diameter and 6 μm in length by using a facile hydrothermal process. Then, a unimorph cantilever energy harvester was fabricated by bonding mixed hierarchical PZT nanowires with a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer matrix to a brass substrate. The measured open-circuit voltage from this harvester was 2.7 V at its fundamental resonance (25.2 Hz) under a 0.1g root-mean-square (RMS) acceleration input, and the measured power density was 51.8 μW cm–3 with an optimal load resistance of 2 MΩ, which is approximately 8 times larger than that of the commercial BaTiO3 nanoparticle energy harvester on the same scale but driven by a much higher acceleration level