Do you know what a piezoelectric is?

Do you know what a piezoelectric is? Are you familiar with 3D printing? So stay tuned because the subject we are talking about today will interest you: Piezo Inks and Pasta.
Piezoelectric materials, as you already know, are those that, when applied to an external force, generate an electric charge. This behavior is reversible, so if we apply an electric charge, they are deformed by varying their dimensions.
Until now, the greatest application of piezoelectric materials has been that of piezoelectric inkjet printers, where electric charges are applied to the head and thus the deformation of this causes the output of the ink drops.
However, new research has managed to create piezoelectric inks, which contain piezoelectric crystals of very small size. This, together with 3D printing technology, makes it possible to coat or create materials with piezoelectric properties in any way.
We know that now you will ask, and for what we want to have the material of the printers with any form? The answer is easy, keep reading!
Imagine a boxing glove, for example. If we want to know exactly with which part the opponent is hit and with what force, we need to put many sensors in the glove with their respective cables in order to measure it. Now instead of using the sensors, imagine that we paint the glove with a piezoelectric ink and what do we get? The entire glove becomes a sensor, which in the face of any deformation that it suffers, will emit an electric charge, which will tell us where the impact has occurred and with what force.
As you can see, the application in the field of sensors is very wide, but not only remains there, since for example we can paint buttons that turn on the devices when pressed without wires, or many other applications in which it deforms the material, possibly by physical force or with heat.
Did you find it interesting? Do you plan to use piezoelectric materials in 2019? Tell us in our RRSS or write us