Novel thick-foam ferroelectret with engineered voids for energy harvesting applications

This work reports a novel thick-foam ferroelectret which is designed and engineered for energy harvesting applications. We fabricated this ferroelectret foam by mixing a chemical blowing agent with a polymer solution, then used heat treatment to activate the agent and create voids in the polymer foam. The dimensions of the foam, the density and size of voids can be well controlled in the fabrication process. Therefore, this ferroelectret can be engineered into optimized structure for energy harvesting applications.