General information

Main thematic area: Material Sciences

Introduction

The prospects for self-powered, electrically stimulated devices are enormous as the number of patients requiring pacemaker or neurostimulator implantation continues to grow. One of the main challenges in these devices is the power supply. Developing soft self-powered devices could pave the way to more accessible treatment of neurodegenerative and cardiac diseases. It may also allow for electric power-triggered (on-off) implantable drug delivery systems. Such devices may be made with stimuli-responsive soft materials, which lead to groundbreaking technological advances in sensors, actuators, and generators and may impact personalized medical devices.

A fascinating and rapidly growing research is charge generation using soft and stretchable materials and devices. They can convert various energy sources into electricity while accommodating a range of surface and shape configurations. Charge generation from soft materials is particularly interesting, especially when conventional rigid energy generators can’t be used, such as in untethered soft robots, wearable electronics, and biomedical implants.

Objectives

This project aims to develop soft stimuli-responsive materials and devices that convert different forms of energy, including mechanical, thermal, and magnetic energy, into electricity. A soft charge generator consists of a stimuli-responsive soft material placed on interdigitated electrodes or between two compliant electrodes whose function is to collect the generated charge. Different kinds of soft materials, including magnetic elastomers, dielectric elastomers, magnetoelectric elastomers, ionogels, and magnetic ionogels, will be developed. They will be processed in functional devices, and their ability to generate charges due to mechanical, thermal, or magnetic stress will be evaluated and optimized.

Thus, we propose:

• to develop and investigate soft magnetic elastic devices that use electromagnetic induction to generate electricity from mechanical and thermal stress;
• to develop and investigate high dielectric permittivity elastomers and their composites with soft magnetic nanoparticles regarding the possibility of converting mechanical and magnetic energy into electricity; and
• to synthesize ionogels and magnetic ionogels based on polyzwitterions and investigate their ability to generate charge when mechanically, thermally, and magnetically stressed.