Title
3D-Printed Carrageenan-Based Nanocomposites for Force Sensing Applications
Author
Macedo, Vera M., Nelson Pereira, Carmen R. Tubio, Pedro Martins, Carlos M. Costa, and Senentxu Lanceros-Mendez
Year
2023
Journal
Advanced Engineering Materials
Abstract
Technological development is leading to an exponential growth in the implementation of sensors and actuators, in order to collect data and support the digitalization of society and economy. The concern about environmental problems has been also focusing on electronic waste (e-waste), which is composed by hazardous materials, corresponds to a large part of urban waste, and has a strong environmental impact, due the exponential growth of electronic equipment use and replacement rate. Therefore, more environmentally friendly electronic components are required, being natural polymers a suitable approach to solve or attenuate those problems. Although, natural polymers only by themselves are generally not suitable enough for many applications, being the implementation of fillers the most interesting approach to tune materials to specific application requirements. This work reports on a bio-based polymer, carrageenan, embedded with dielectric barium titanate (BTO) nanoparticles to tailor the electrical response. The inclusion of the filler?s induces slight modifications in the thermal characteristics and on the physicochemical properties of the polymer matrix. On the other hand, the mechanical and dielectric properties improve with the addition of BTO and a high dielectric constant of ε’ ?13000 has been obtained for the composite with 20 wt.% BTO content. The increase of the dielectric constant is accompanied by a high a.c. electrical conductivity, leading to a high ε’ ? high loss material. The 20 wt.% BTO composite was used to produce a force measuring sensor, due to the highest dielectric response. The functional response of the sensing system showed good stability over cycling. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Instrument
FT/IR-4100
Keywords
Nanocomposites,natural polymer,filler,