Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Organic Chemical Materials - Hubei Key Laboratory of Ferro & Piezoelectric Materials and Devices, Faculty of Physics & Electronic Sciences, Hubei University , Wuhan 430062, People's Republic of China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2017 Aug 30;9(34):28586-28595. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b08541. Epub 2017 Aug 17.
The rapid development of microscaled piezoelectric energy harvesters has provided a simple and highly efficient way for building self-powered sensor systems through harvesting the mechanical energy from the ambient environment. In this work, a self-powered microfluidic sensor that can harvest the mechanical energy of the fluid and simultaneously monitor their characteristics was fabricated by integrating the flexible piezoelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) nanofibers with the well-designed microfluidic chips. Those devices could generate open-circuit high output voltage up to 1.8 V when a droplet of water is flowing past the suspended PVDF nanofibers and result in their periodical deformations. The impulsive output voltage signal allowed them to be utilized for droplets or bubbles counting in the microfluidic systems. Furthermore, the devices also exhibited self-powered sensing behavior due to the decreased voltage amplitude with increasing input pressure and liquid viscosity. The drop of output voltage could be attributed to the variation of flow condition and velocity of the droplets, leading to the reduced deformation of the piezoelectric PVDF layer and the decrease of the generated piezoelectric potential.
微尺度压电能量收集器的快速发展为通过从环境中收集机械能来构建自供电传感器系统提供了一种简单而高效的方法。在这项工作中，通过将柔性压电聚偏二氟乙烯 (PVDF) 纳米纤维与精心设计的微流控芯片集成，制造出了一种能够收集流体机械能并同时监测其特性的自供电微流控传感器。当一滴水流过悬浮的 PVDF 纳米纤维并导致其周期性变形时，这些器件可以产生高达 1.8 V 的开路高输出电压。脉冲输出电压信号允许它们在微流控系统中用于液滴或气泡计数。此外，由于输入压力和液体粘度的增加导致电压幅度减小，这些器件还表现出自供电传感行为。输出电压的下降归因于流态和液滴速度的变化，导致压电 PVDF 层的变形减少和产生的压电电势降低。
