RESEARCH ARTICLE

Flexible piezoelectric polymer composites with magnetic-field-oriented BNNS and imprinted micropillars for self-powered sensors

¹ Micro- and Nanotechnology Research Center, State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
² School of Future Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
³ Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education & International Center for Dielectric Research, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

^* Corresponding authors (emails: xiaomingchen@xjtu.edu.cn (Xiaoming Chen); jzhang12@xjtu.edu.cn (Jie Zhang))

Received: 11 September 2024
Revised: 6 November 2024
Accepted: 26 November 2024

Abstract

Improving the response of sensors is often hindered by inadequate molding effects and complex manufacturing processes. Here, combining a simple magnetic-field-orientation and nano-imprinting process, a micropillar arrayed sensor was successfully fabricated, meanwhile, the boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS) were oriented in the polymer matrix. Due to the strain confinement effect, the outputted voltage of m-BNNS/PDMS composite film (SA_BNNS) demonstrated an improvement of 115.5% compared to the film sample with randomly dispersed nanoparticles. And the device showed a high sensitivity and rapid response capability to human motion. Furthermore, the oriented arrangement of m-BNNS and the enlarged heat dissipation area of the micropillar array contribute to the optimized thermal conductivity of the device.