Variable piezoelectricity of electrospun chitin

Reva M Street; Tatyana Huseynova; Xin Xu; Prashant Chandrasekaran; Lin Han; Wan Y Shih; Wei-Heng Shih; Caroline L Schauer

doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2018.04.086

Variable piezoelectricity of electrospun chitin

Carbohydr Polym. 2018 Sep 1:195:218-224. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2018.04.086. Epub 2018 Apr 24.

Authors

Reva M Street¹, Tatyana Huseynova¹, Xin Xu², Prashant Chandrasekaran², Lin Han², Wan Y Shih², Wei-Heng Shih¹, Caroline L Schauer³

Affiliations

¹ Materials Science and Engineering, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States.
² Biomedical Engineering, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States.
³ Materials Science and Engineering, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States. Electronic address: cls52@drexel.edu.

PMID: 29804971
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2018.04.086

Abstract

Investigations into the piezoelectricity of natural polymers is a continuing area of interest due to their potential role in the complex interplay of mechanical and electrical forces present in biological organisms. Their synthetic counterparts, when electrospun using the air gap electrospinning method, are known to have increased crystallinity and tensile strength as compared to randomly aligned nanofibers composed of the same constituent polymers. Using the air gap electrospinning method with the naturally-occurring, semi-crystalline polymer chitin, the nanofibers were determined to have a 300% increase in tensile strength over randomly collected ones. Additionally, a 400% increase in piezoelectric response in the aligned nanofiber chitin mats was measured. The increased tensile strength and piezoelectricity in aligned chitin nanofibers is a consequence of an increase in α-chitin crystallinity in the nanofibers induced by the air gap collection method.

Keywords: Chitin; Collagen; Electrospinning; Gelatin; Piezoelectricity.