Effect of electrospinning parameters on piezoelectric properties of electrospun PVDF nanofibrous mats under cyclic compression

The high piezoelectric response capacity of electrospun PVDF nanofibers is currently a challenging area of research, and this study attempts to optimize the piezoelectric properties of electrospun PVDF nanofibrous mat under controlled electrospinning process. Some experiments were designed to study the relationship between electrospinning processing parameters and the piezoelectric properties of PVDF mats under cyclic compression, and this relationship was compared with the change of crystalline structure features with the electrospinning parameters. The excitation method is based on low velocity compression test by cyclically pressing flat contactor on samples. The impact of each of processing parameters has been investigated. It was found that three electrospinning parameters including: applied voltage, feeding volume flow rate and syringe needle tip diameter, are significant influential factors to the piezoelectric properties of the electrospun PVDF nanofibrous mats. However, the feeding volume flow rate has a greater effect on the piezoelectric responses to cyclic compression than both applied voltage and volume flow rate does, and its effect on the piezoelectric responses is different from that of β-phase fraction of crystalline structure within PVDF nanofiber. It was also observed that the relationship between the piezoelectric peak intensity and the applied voltage as well as the feeding volume flow rate is nonlinear.