High-Performance Piezoelectric Biomaterials for Biocompatible Energy Harvesters and Sensors

Piezoelectric biomaterials have been the focus of research due to their potential use in electrical stimulation therapy, implantable sensors, actuators, and energy harvesters. However, their practical application is limited due to the random and unswitchable polarization of biomaterials, as well as challenges in domain alignment at a large scale and improving piezoelectricity. In this study, we present a strategy for producing customizable piezoelectric biomaterial thin films using the electric field driven nanoconfinement technique. The bio-organic films consist of compact β glycine nanocrystals that resemble inorganic ceramic structures, with homogeneous nucleation and in situ electric field facilitating domain orientation alignment across the entire film. The β glycine films exhibit an enhanced piezoelectric strain constant of 11.2 pm V ^-1 and high piezoelectric voltage constants of 251.5×10 ^-3 Vm N ^-1 , which is an order of magnitude larger than that of PZT. The presented strategy is generalizable for constructing high-performance large-sized piezoelectric bio-organic materials applicable for developing implantable microdevices.