Wearable Internet of Things (IoT) devices require innovatively designed electromagnetic materials and energy harvesting technology, and such devices must be lightweight and able to withstand vigorous exercise and impact. Associate Professor Fumio NARITA and his team at the Department of Materials Processing, Graduate School of Engineering at Tohoku University are engaged in research to design and develop polymer-based composite materials incorporating magnetostrictive fibers and piezoelectric nanoparticles for sensing and energy harvesting applications. They are making extensive use of state-of-the-art electromagneto-mechanical characterization techniques, in combination with computational modeling to gain insights into fundamental structure-property relationships of complex multifunctional composite materials.

Recently, they have successfully developed a novel magnetostrictive fiber/polymer composite for the first time by embedding strong textured Fe-Co fibers with a diameter of approximately 0.2 mm in an epoxy matrix. They showed that the output voltage density of this novel composite due to compression dramatically increases with increasing stress-rate. “I believe that our work opens the door for development of lightweight, robust, and efficient sensor and energy harvesting devices,” says Associate Professor NARITA.

They are also conducting research with a theme of "Let's create the best biodegradable composite!" using materials such as cotton, bamboo, and cellulose nanofiber. Their lab is full of plants.