Rational design of piezoelectric metamaterials with tailored electro-momentum coupling

TL;DR

This paper explores the physical origins and design principles of electro-momentum coupling in piezoelectric metamaterials, enabling tailored energy transduction and sensing capabilities through microstructure engineering.

Contribution

It provides a homogenization-based analysis of how microstructure design influences electro-momentum coupling in piezoelectric composites, revealing new design opportunities.

Findings

Material properties and geometry significantly affect electro-momentum coupling.

Homogenization scheme effectively predicts coupling behavior.

Microstructure tailoring can optimize energy transduction applications.

Abstract

Piezoelectric materials have wide sensing and energy transduction applications due to their inherent coupling of mechanical deformation and electric field. Recent discoveries have revealed that asymmetric or heterogeneous microstructures of piezoelectric composites can create an additional coupling of macroscopic momentum to an electric field termed electro-momentum coupling, introducing a new degree of design freedom. In this work, by employing the homogenization scheme, the physical origin of electro-momentum coupling is explored by a high throughput sweep over the microstructure design space of a piezoelectric composite system. This study shows how material constituent properties and geometrical arrangements can affect electro-momentum coupling and be smartly tailored for applications of interest.