Harvesting energy with plant-based phononics – Harvest

A strategic approach to advance resource efficiency is to develop circular energy sources from the biomass. In this context, plants present a "green" materials' platform to convert mechanical energy into electricity due to their piezoelectric behavior. While the piezoelectric effect has been known to exist in plants for decades, leveraging it for energy harvesting of acoustic waves has remained an unmet challenge, due, in part, to the weak piezoelectricity of plants. In this project, we aim at creating plant-based materials, with enhanced piezoelectricity, for efficient energy harvesting of acoustic waves. To achieve this, we will design plant-derived phononic structures and exploit the interplay between phononic features and plant piezoelectricity. We will convert the designed plant-based phononic structures into piezoelectric energy harvesters, and manipulate their energy harvesting performance via mechanical control of their microstructural features. We expect our engineered plant-based harvesters will democratize the design of vibro-acoustic energy harvesting materials by adding simplicity and practicality to their design, and will find applications in remote health monitoring, wearable devices for telemedicine, and wireless communication.