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Post Info TOPIC: Piezoelectric effect
Blobrana


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Space foil helping to build safer cars

Hermes was planned as a reusable manned vehicle launched on Ariane 5.
To map the pressure distribution on the wings as Hermes returned through the atmosphere, a new sensor was needed because regular instruments were too bulky and added unrealistic drag. So Paul Mirow's team turned to a special 'piezoelectric' foil to do the job.
Piezoelectric materials have a special property that converts physical effects like vibration and pressure into minute electric pulses.
In foil form, piezoelectric materials can serve as extremely lightweight sensors, able to cover an entire surface without distorting the results by adding drag.
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Blobrana


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Scavenging energy waste to turn water into hydrogen fuel

Materials scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have designed a way to harvest small amounts of waste energy and harness them to turn water into usable hydrogen fuel.
The process is simple, efficient and recycles otherwise-wasted energy into a useable form.
The researchers, led by UW-Madison geologist and crystal specialist Huifang Xu, grew nanocrystals of two common crystals, zinc oxide and barium titanate, and placed them in water. When pulsed with ultrasonic vibrations, the nanofibres flexed and catalysed a chemical reaction to split the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.
When the fibres bend, asymmetries in their crystal structures generate positive and negative charges and create an electrical potential. This phenomenon, called the piezoelectric effect, has been well known in certain crystals for more than a century and is the driving force behind quartz clocks and other applications.
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