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Energy harvesting

Pyroelectricity gain in multilayers

Nature Energy volume 7, pages 1007–1008 (2022)Cite this article

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Pyroelectric materials have potential applications in sensors and energy harvesters but it is difficult for these materials to deliver energy in the joule range. Now, a pyroelectric harvester made of lead scandium tantalate with a multilayer structure is shown to generate about 4.43 J cm–3 from each thermodynamic cycle.

Pyroelectricity is the temperature-induced spontaneous polarization variation with time in pyroelectric materials which can drive the flow of electrons in an external circuit1. It has been extensively used in self-powered sensors2 and energy scavenging devices3. The corresponding thermal energy scavenging capability has been limited due to low energy conversion efficiency, and typical pyroelectric devices cannot generate energy beyond the joule scale. A few approaches have been reported to increase the energy conversion efficiency by improving pyroelectric coefficient: the use of ZnO nanowires rather than bulk ZnO (ref. 4), the decrease of the thickness of materials5, the creation of a built-in electric field using p-n junctions6, or the control of the temperature near the phase transition of bulk BaTiO3 (ref. 7). However, these methods enable only low energy output, usually smaller than 1 J, which is not yet sufficient for realizing the practical applications such as driving electronic devices.

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Fig. 1: Device structure and performance of the PST pyroelectric energy harvester with a multilayer structure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, Beijing Key Laboratory of Micro-nano Energy and Sensor, Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P. R. China

    Ya Yang

  2. School of Nanoscience and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P. R. China

    Ya Yang

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  1. Ya Yang
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Correspondence to Ya Yang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Yang, Y. Pyroelectricity gain in multilayers. Nat Energy 7, 1007–1008 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01143-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01143-1

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