Electrospinning lead-free 0.5Ba(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O-3-0.5(Ba0.7Ca0.3)TiO3 nanowires and their application in energy harvesting

High performance nanogenerators (NGs) are critically important for energy harvesting and powering micro/nano-devices. Environmentally friendly nanowires (NWs) with high piezoelectric coefficients are highly desirable for enhancing NGs' performance and expanding their applications. In this paper, we synthesized a new kind of lead-free 0.5Ba(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O-3-0.5(Ba0.7Ca0.3)TiO3 (BZT-BCT) NWs with high piezoelectric coefficients through the electrospinning method and subsequent calcining process. Their crystal structure and formation mechanism were systematically studied. Furthermore, BZT-BCT NWs were made into a high performance flexible NG. It could harvest weak mechanical movement energy and generate an output voltage of 3.25 V and output current of 55 nA, which is large enough to directly power a commercial liquid crystal display (LCD).