From the perspective of environmental energy collection, nanogenerators have great development prospects in self-driven systems such as structural monitoring sensors, environmental measurement and chemical and biological sensors. Diphenylalanine peptide can self-assembled into nanotubes, displaying excellent piezoelectric properties. It is a promising candidate for piezoelectric biomaterials. However, there are still some challenges in large-scale assembly of flexible devices. As the assembly and testing of new devices are very risky, complex and time-consuming, it is difficult to predict the performance of materials without a comprehensive calculation model. The piezoelectric properties of piezoelectric materials can be evaluated by the multi-physical finite element models. At present, there are some reports on the simulation of finite element models on the piezoelectric properties of some piezoelectric nanogenerator materials (such as zinc oxide) and the mechanical properties of FF peptide nanostructures and blocks. However, there is no report on the simulation of piezoelectric properties of flexible FF peptide before.

Prof. Yang Rusen’ team of School of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, together with Prof. Wu Ying ofChongqing University, published the article,Piezoelectric Diphenylalanine Peptide for Greatly Improved Flexible Nanogenerators,inNano Energy.

In this paper, multi-physicalfinite element models are used to simulate the output voltage of FF peptide, zinc oxide, lead zirconate titanate and barium titanate, and the results showed that FF peptide biomaterial has higher output voltage under the same circumstance. Based on the piezoelectric potentials calculated in the nanogenerator model, the author evaluated the open circuit voltage of FF nanogenerator. What’s more, to validate the model, the author fabricated a flexible piezoelectric nanogenerator based on vertical arrays of FF peptide microrods and measured an open circuit voltage of up to − 0.6 V. The estimated open circuit voltage predicted by the model was in close agreement with the measured value from the fabricated nanogenerator. The results illustrated the promising potential of FF peptide as a piezoelectric material, and depicted the importance of finite element models for providing insight into the development of a new generation of FF peptide-enabled devices.

Link to the paper:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211285518304567