Nanocellulose as a Piezoelectric Material

Abstract

Cellulose-based nanomaterials, which are generally known as nanocelluloses, are interesting renewable biomaterials which have potential applications for example in material science, electronics and biomedical engineering and diagnostics. Cellulose has a strong ability to form lightweight, highly porous and entangled networks that make nanocellulose suitable as substrate or membrane material. Recently, also studies related to piezoelectric behavior of nanocellulose have been published. The piezoelectricity of wood was proposed already in 1955 by Eiichi Fukada, but only very slightly studied since then. Here, we show the experimental evidence of significant piezoelectric activity of different types of nanocellulose films. Wood-based cellulose nanofibril (CNF) and cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) films, and bacterial nanocellulose (BC) films have been studied. The recent results suggest that nanocellulose is a potential bio-based piezoelectric sensor material.