Investigation of the durability and stability of piezoelectric textile fibres

Abstract

Polymers such as polyvinylidene difluoride, polypropylene and polyamide-11 show great promise for providing lightweight, flexible and fibrous piezoelectric materials that can be integrated into technical textile fabric structures for energy harvesting applications. Durability is an important parameter for the textiles and especially for functional and smart materials. This research work provides an insight on the piezoelectric behaviour of polypropylene, polyamide-11 and polyvinylidene difluoride in terms of peak-to-peak voltage generation capabilities after washing at 40 degrees C with the addition of detergent as described in test method BS EN ISO 105-C06: 2010. It was observed that the peak-to-peak voltage generated by polypropylene monofilaments retained similar values with only slight differences, while the monofilaments of polyvinylidene difluoride and polyamide-11 showed higher peak-to-peak voltage generation after washing. These changes have been explained using the changes in the crystallinity and phase, as determined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis.