Twents bedrijf SolMateS maakt beweging op een computerchip mogelijk en ontvangt investering van € 2 miljoen voor revolutie in chipindustrie.

1. Haptic feedback paper approved for the CHI conference

2. Ultra low power chip released

3. Getinge sterilization releases product with Aito piezo touch

On jan. 3 2011 Pim Groen gave a class at the University of Delft at the Department of Aerospace Engineering on Piezoelelectric Materials & Application. All students were given the book "The hidden use of piezo technology in applications" which recently has been published by the "Stichting Applied Piezo"

 SmartPIE is taking part in the Energy Harvesting and storage conference in Boston 16 and 17 November 2010. Recent research results on energy scavenging materials for power harvesting in car tyres wil be presented. Road safety requirements and environmental issues are driving forces for the incorporation of wireless sensors in car tyres. To eliminate the need for batteries, many types of energy harvesting modules are being developed. One promising solution is based on piezoelectric mechanical to electrical energy conversion. Several piezoelectric materials have been tested as possible candidates for car tyre energy harvesting. However none of these options satisfy all the stringent operating and lifetime requirements for use inside a car tyre, especially mechanical (accelerations of up to 3000m/s2) and thermal requirements (temperatures of -40 to 120ºC). SmartPIE developed composites of piezoelectric ceramic particles embedded in a polymer matrix offer a wide range of material properties and can be designed to fulfill all these operating requirements as wel as being suitable for low-cost mass production on flexible foils.

 Within the SmartPIE project, piezoelectric polymer composite sensors were developed. These sensors show extreme temperature stability up to 100ºC. The use of piezoelectric composite materials allows for manufacturing robust devices which can easily be integrated with conventional polymer processing. Piezoelectric composites of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) and two types of polymers, polyamide-6 (PA6) and a liquid crystalline thermosetting polymer (LCT) were used to manufacture sensor devices. The behavior of the output signal of different types of sensors was studied with focus on both temperature dependence of the output signal and the drift of the signal with time. The properties of the PA6 based composites and devices are highly temperature dependent while the output signal of LCT based composites and devices has a very low temperature dependence and drift, even outperforming the PZT reference device. The temperature dependence of the output signal of the composite devices is dependent on the device configuration as well as the material properties, such as polymer permittivity. The drift of the signal is strongly dependent on the resistivity of the PZT–polymer composite material used in the sensor. The results were published inthe journal Sensors and Actuators A.

Link to full article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sna.2010.06.010

 Recently, SmartPIE researchers developed high performance piezoelectric composite materials comprising of the piezoelectric Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) powder and a liquid crystalline thermosetting matrix polymer (LCT). The matrix polymer is a liquid crystalline polymer comprising of an HBA-HNA backbone with phenylethynyl end-groups, and is extremely temperature resistant. The use of a high performance polymer makes the composite a possible candidate to be used in sensor applications at elevated temperatures. The composite properties were optimised by calcining (heat treating) the PZT powder at different temperatures, prior to mixing the powders into the polymer matrix. It was found that a relationship exists between the calcining temperature of the PZT powder and the piezoelectric properties of the composites. The results were published in Journal of Electroceramics

Link to full article: http://www.springerlink.com/content/92wm203111891t86/

Recently, SmartPIE scientists developed new piezoceramic powder-polymer composites that are easy to manufacture but show enhanced properties over traditional piezopowder composites. The piezoelectric properties of the material are increased while ceramic volume fraction for maximum sensitivity is lowered leading to lighter, cheaper composites. The results were published in the Journal of Applied Physics.

Link to full article (http://link.aip.org/link/JAPIAU/v107/i2/p024107/s1 or http://repository.tudelft.nl/view/ir/uuid%3A0f938f54-7f7e-4d30-8c9c-6654d23fdf87/)

Dr W.A. Groen (Pim) from TNO has been asked to be the new chairman of the supervisory board from SMARTPIE.