Enhanced piezoelectric properties of randomly oriented and aligned electrospun PVDF fibers by regulating the surface morphology

ABSTRACT Harvesting energy has been attracting the attention of researchers in recent years. This work comprehensively reports the fabrication and characterization of poly(vinylidene fluoride) fiber webs with comparable diameters and diversified surface morphologies (wrinkled, smooth, and porous) based on randomly oriented and aligned fiber webs which are used as active layers to directly make a piezoelectric nanogenerator (PENG). The results show that wrinkled fibers are preferable fiber webs for the PENG owing to their outstanding properties represented by high fibers friction, supreme β phase content ( F [β]), and interior pores. Furthermore, we found that the electrical outputs of the PENG based on aligned fiber webs are higher than those based on randomly oriented fiber webs due to the increase in the friction area. The electrical outputs of the PENG based on the aligned wrinkled fiber webs are able to run microelectronic devices when it subjected to a mechanical impact. We believe that our study may inspire the research area for future energy harvesting applications. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136 , 47049.