Fabrication of polylactic acid nanofibrous yarns for piezoelectric fabrics

Abstract

With the rapid development of smart wearable devices and the urgent demands for new energy resources, fibrous flexible power supply units had attracted a lot of interest. Here, we reported the fabrication of polylactic acid (PLA) piezoelectric nanofibrous yarn-based fabric through conjugated electrospinning and weaving process. Five kinds of PLA yarns including poly(l-lactide) (PLLA), poly(d-lactide) (PDLA), PLLA positive/PDLA negative, PDLA positive/PLLA negative, and PLLA/PDLA mixture (1:1 w/w) ones were prepared and investigated. Among these, the PLLA/PDLA yarn had more uniform and oriented structure with 301 MPa tensile strength, which could meet the requirement of weaving. A 4 cm × 4 cm woven PLLA/PDLA fabric could provide a maximum current of 90.86 nA and a voltage of 8.69 V under 5 N force, and the piezoelectricity could be enhanced by the fabric area and the applied force. This approach may be helpful for the design of wearing generators.

Keywords

• polylactic acid
• conjugated electrospinning
• nanofiber yarns
• fabric
• piezoelectricity