Abstract
In the study, we improved the near-field electrospinning (NFES) by multi-spinnerets with a cylindrical collector to fabricate a large area permanent piezoelectric of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) fibers array. We designed multi-spinnerets by using printed circuit board (PCB) and drilled spinnerets on the solder balls. With different process parameters, we can obtain different diameters of PVDF fibers. By using the Taguchi method analysis, we found that the optimum sample of PVDF fiber arrays were manufactured by an electrical field of 1.6 × 107 V/m. The cylindrical collector with high tangential velocity of 1779.9 mm/s and the heat treatment temperature of 65 °C for one hour. In addition, we used X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to analyze β-phase crystal quality and the surface character of PVDF fibers, respectively. From the observation of XRD, it revealed a high diffraction peak at 2θ = 20.6° of piezoelectric crystal β-phase structure. As PVDF solution with concentration of 18 wt % and the conductivity of 44.2 μS/cm was electrospun via NFES with multi-spinneret structure, we obtained a smooth manufacturing process. When the periodical tapping frequency was applied with 9 Hz, the maximum peak voltage of 86.9 mV was generated. In a cicada’s wing test, when the tapping frequency input was applied during 10–50 Hz, the maximum output voltage signals of 6.2 mV were generated.
Highlights
Electrospinning technology has been one of the common processing technologies in industrial production for microfibers since the 1990s
The multi-spinneret system did not have to set up additional complex flow channels or pipelines, so it is convenient for its extensive application in the future
In order to investigate the influence of the crystal structure in piezoelectric fibers from changing process parameters, the crystal inside the the crystal structure in piezoelectric fibers from changing process parameters, the crystal inside the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) fiber was converted from a common α phase crystal without a piezoelectric property into β
Summary
Electrospinning technology has been one of the common processing technologies in industrial production for microfibers since the 1990s. How to produce microfibers orderly with good piezoelectric property in large quantities is a topical subject in the studies of electrospinning, and it is a critical threshold for the commercial applications of the PVDF fibers. A needle-disk electrode spinneret was designed through the combination of the point discharge concept and the merits of typical needleless electrospinning (disk as spinneret) Both the numerical simulation and experimental results showed that needle-disk electrospinning can produce competitive quality of nanofibers accompanied by enhanced throughput, compared with the traditional single-needle electrospinning method [26]. This study proposes a novel method, using needleless multi-spinneret structure in NFES to reduce the distance between collector and spinneret, and it solves the interference problem between needle heads. According to X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, the obtained microfiber had good piezoelectric properties, and it can be the applications of sensors or energy harvesters
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