Microstructural Effects on the Effective Piezoelectric Responses of Additively Manufactured Triply Periodic Co-Continuous Piezocomposites

Triply Periodic Co-continuous piezocomposites, which consist of a ferroelectric-ceramic phase and an elastic-polymer phase continuously interconnected in three dimensions (3D), are emerging flexible piezoelectric materials with high efficiency in absorbing and converting multi-directional mechanical stimuli into electrical signals. Current co-continuous piezocomposites cannot be achieved with controlled piezoelectric properties due to the limited capability of traditional fabrication methods in carefully controlling the morphology of each phase, additive manufacturing such as Suspension-Enclosing Projection-Stereolithography process thus was selected. Porous ceramic skeleton with randomly distributed grain size is commonly observed in sintered ceramic skeleton fabricated by additive manufacturing. The effective piezoelectric properties of the piezocomposites were thus studied utilizing a two-scale method. Through analyzing the simulated results of different process parameters, optimal parameters of 3D printing processes including post-processes was subsequently suggested