Racemic Amino Acid Piezoelectric Transducer.

Single crystal L-amino acids can exhibit technologically useful piezoelectric and nonlinear optical properties. Here we predict, using density functional theory, the piezoelectric charge and strain and voltage tensors of the racemic amino acid DL alanine, and use the modeling data to guide the first macroscopic and nanoscopic piezoelectric measurements on DL-alanine single crystals and polycrystalline aggregates. We demonstrate voltage generation of up to 0.

Control of piezoelectricity in amino acids by supramolecular packing.

Piezoelectricity, the linear relationship between stress and induced electrical charge, has attracted recent interest due to its manifestation in biological molecules such as synthetic polypeptides or amino acid crystals, including gamma (γ) glycine. It has also been demonstrated in bone, collagen, elastin and the synthetic bone mineral hydroxyapatite. Piezoelectric coefficients exhibited by these biological materials are generally low, typically in the range of 0.