The effect of compound and metallic coatings of graphite, silver, tin oxidem and copper on the ability of a piezoelectric disc to boost its production of piezoelectricity after tensile failure

Piezoelectric devices can break from too much stress, causing tensile failure. When in complete tensile failure or fracture, piezoelectric devices need to be replaced. In order to try and fix this problem, the idea of using metallic or compound coatings over the areas of tensile failure was proposed. The four different materials used were silver, graphite, tin oxide, and copper. The hypothesis for this research project was that if graphite were used, it would be the best coating for the piezo discs because it contains graphene, which is very flexible and highly conductible. The piezo discs were first studied under a microscope, and each broken with a machinist\u27s vice to simulate tensile failure. The electricity production was then measured with a multimeter at the setting of 200V DC. After the results were recorded, the coatings were made by mixing two grams of every material with acrylic paint. These paints were then spread on certain piezo discs, and then tested for piezoelectricity again. The differences between these two data sets were calculated to test if the coatings were effective. The results can be seen in Figures 6-8 in the Appendix. An ANOVA test (F(4.85)=1.27, p=0.29) was used to test the significance of the results, the p-value was 0.29, which was greater than the alpha value 0.05. This means the null hypothesis was not rejected, and it can be concluded that there were not any significant differences between the different groups of piezo discs