Partner: A. Toncelli


Recent publications
1.Szewczyk P.K., Gradys A., Kyun Kim S., Persano L., Marzec M., Kryshtal A., Busolo T., Toncelli A., Pisignano D., Bernasik A., Kar-Narayan S., Sajkiewicz P., Stachewicz U., Enhanced piezoelectricity of electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride fibers for energy harvesting, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, ISSN: 1944-8244, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c02578, Vol.12, No.11, pp.13575-13583, 2020
Abstract:

Piezoelectric polymers are promising energy materials for wearable and implantable applications for replacing bulky batteries in small and flexible electronics. Therefore, many research studies are focused on understanding the behavior of polymers at a molecular level and designing new polymer-based generators using polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF). In this work, we investigated the influence of voltage polarity and ambient relative humidity in electrospinning of PVDF for energy-harvesting applications. A multitechnique approach combining microscopy and spectroscopy was used to study the content of the β-phase and piezoelectric properties of PVDF fibers. We shed new light on β-phase crystallization in electrospun PVDF and showed the enhanced piezoelectric response of the PVDF fiber-based generator produced with the negative voltage polarity at a relative humidity of 60%. Above all, we proved that not only crystallinity but also surface chemistry is crucial for improving piezoelectric performance in PVDF fibers. Controlling relative humidity and voltage polarity increased the d33 piezoelectric coefficient for PVDF fibers by more than three times and allowed us to generate a power density of 0.6 μW·cm^–2 from PVDF membranes. This study showed that the electrospinning technique can be used as a single-step process for obtaining a vast spectrum of PVDF fibers exhibiting different physicochemical properties with β-phase crystallinity reaching up to 74%. The humidity and voltage polarity are critical factors in respect of chemistry of the material on piezoelectricity of PVDF fibers, which establishes a novel route to engineer materials for energy-harvesting and sensing applications.

Keywords:

PVDF, polymer crystallinity, electrospinning, piezoelectricity, voltage polarity

Affiliations:
Szewczyk P.K.-other affiliation
Gradys A.-IPPT PAN
Kyun Kim S.-other affiliation
Persano L.-other affiliation
Marzec M.-other affiliation
Kryshtal A.-other affiliation
Busolo T.-other affiliation
Toncelli A.-other affiliation
Pisignano D.-other affiliation
Bernasik A.-other affiliation
Kar-Narayan S.-other affiliation
Sajkiewicz P.-IPPT PAN
Stachewicz U.-AGH University of Science and Technology (PL)