Fabrication of Hybrid Poly(vinylidene fluoride)-Polyamide-11 Piezoelectric Sensor Using Conjugate Electrospinning with Enhanced Energy Conversion Efficiency

Implantable medical devices such as pacemakers are designed to treat, diagnose, and prevent different diseases. Lithium batteries are commonly applied to power these devices, but because of their limited capacity and lifetime, patients have to suffer a painful and risky surgical procedure to replace them. Recently, nanogenerators have been emerged and are widely noticed as they can convert very small biomechanical energies such as heartbeats into electrical energy. The purpose of this project is to manufacture a piezoelectric sensor as an energy harvester with proper performance and biocompatibility with improved electrical output. In this research, a hybrid structure of PVDF coupling with polyamide 11 (PA11) was fabricated using conjugate electrospinning to enhance the piezoelectric properties of the intended piezoelectric sensor. The piezoelectric test results showed an acceptable increase of the piezoelectric coefficient of nanofibers from 62.87 mV/N to 75.75 mV/N by adding 25% volumetric PA 11, indicating the synergistic properties of these two compounds. The specimen (75% PVDF/25% PA 11) also has the highest mechanical properties and can therefore be suggested as an optimum sample.