Scientists create new lead-free piezoelectric materials

Dae-Sung Park and Dragan Damjanovic in their lab. Alain Herzog 2022 EPFL - Researchers have discovered that gadolinium-doped cerium oxide, a compound they created in the lab, could be a promising alternative to certain piezoelectric materials: it has the same proprieties yet may be 100 times more effective. It's also lead-free, unlike the best piezoelectric materials, which means that it could be employed in bio-compatible medical applications. Further research will be conducted on this highly promising compound and similar materials. Scientists at EPFL's School of Engineering have found that by manipulating atomic defects in a lead-free material that is normally not piezoelectric, it is possible to induce a large piezoelectric effect. Piezoelectric materials are used widely in modern-day devices, such as digital watches, cars (for controlling emissions of harmful gases) and ultrasonic instruments (for medical diagnosis and imaging). -Piezoelectric materials convert electrical energy into mechanical energy and vice-versa,- says Dr. Dae-Sung Park, a postdoc at EPFL's research group for ferroelectrics and functional oxides, headed by Prof. Dragan Damjanovic.