Piezoelectric materials are excellent generators of clean renewable energy because they can convert ubiquitous vibration and mechanical power into electrical energy. Although traditional piezoelectric materials such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT), lithium niobate, gallium nitride, and barium titanate are practical for energy generation, their fabrication frequently requires environmentally harmful components and/or energy processes. Recent studies on environmental friend biomolecular piezoelectric materials such as amino acids, peptides, proteins, and viruses have great attention because they are applicable to bioelectronics and biomedical applications. Compared with inorganic and synthetic counterparts, however, biomolecular piezoelectric materials have not been extensively studied for general piezoelectric applications because the piezoelectric response of the major piezoelectric components (d33, d31, d11) are weak. Furthermore, the difficulty of fabricating unidirectionally polarized biomolecular piezoelectric structures that can efficiently convert mechanical energy into electrical energy has been a major obstacle to the realization of robust piezoelectric energy generators.

In this talk, I will introduce recent research on strategies and methods for synthesizing and controlling large-scale aligned various biomolecule piezoelectric materials. The orientation and polarization directions of these materials were controlled using biomimetic self-assembly process which is low cost and environmentally friend process. Furthermore, the energy generators based on the biomolecular piezoelectric materials were demonstrated.