{"id":238874,"date":"2026-06-13T06:13:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T11:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/rare-earth-free-zinc-oxide-achieves-a-first-in-stress-to-light-conversion"},"modified":"2026-06-13T06:13:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T11:13:53","slug":"rare-earth-free-zinc-oxide-achieves-a-first-in-stress-to-light-conversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/rare-earth-free-zinc-oxide-achieves-a-first-in-stress-to-light-conversion","title":{"rendered":"Rare-earth-free zinc oxide achieves a first in stress-to-light conversion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/rare-earth-free-zinc-oxide-achieves-a-first-in-stress-to-light-conversion2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mechanoluminescent materials convert mechanical energy such as stress, strain and vibration directly into light, making them attractive as self-powered sensors that require no batteries or wiring. From biomedical sensors to self-powered infrastructure monitoring sensors, mechanoluminescent materials have a wide range of potential applications. However, high-performance mechanoluminescent materials have traditionally relied on expensive rare-earth materials or complex material compositions.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a research team led by Tohoku University, in collaboration with the University of Tsukuba and Saga University, has developed a zinc oxide (ZnO) material that exhibits strong, highly sensitive mechanoluminescence without using any rare-earth elements.<\/p>\n<p>The newly developed material combines high sensitivity with low cost by using zinc oxide, an earth-abundant material already found in products such as sunscreens, cosmetics and ointments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mechanoluminescent materials convert mechanical energy such as stress, strain and vibration directly into light, making them attractive as self-powered sensors that require no batteries or wiring. From biomedical sensors to self-powered infrastructure monitoring sensors, mechanoluminescent materials have a wide range of potential applications. However, high-performance mechanoluminescent materials have traditionally relied on expensive rare-earth materials or [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}