Functional materials fuel photon power

The functional materials exhibiting piezo or ferroelectric properties, are finding applications in photocatalysis and photovoltaic devices. One of the piezoelectric materials, Zinc oxide, is a material that exhibits a variety of properties that make it particularly suitable for the collection of photogenerated electrons. Another valuable feature is that it is relatively easy to make ZnO into nanorods. Another type of photovoltaic device uses Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO₃) as the complete photovoltaic. The material is present between a transparent bottom electrode and metallic top electrode to produce a homojunction photovoltaic. Bismuth ferrite is multiferoic exhibiting both ferroelectric and magnetic properties and is also photoactive with a band gap of around 2eV. A unique feature of ZnO and all piezoelectric materials is that movement induces an electric dipole in the material, which is a source of an electric field that can be used to generate power and is the basis of a number of devices that convert vibrational energy into electrical energy.