Flexible, biodegradable ultrasonic wireless electrotherapy device based on highly self-aligned piezoelectric biofilms

Authors: Haoyue Xue, Jing Jin, Zhi Tan, Keliang Chen, Gengxi Lu, Yushun Zeng, Xiaolin Hu, Xingchen Peng, Laiming Jiang, Jiagang Wu

Published: 2024-05-31

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn0260

Source: Full article


Abstract

Biodegradable piezoelectric devices hold great promise in on-demand transient bioelectronics. Existing piezoelectric biomaterials, however, remain obstacles to the development of such devices due to difficulties in large-scale crystal orientation alignment and weak piezoelectricity. Here, we present a strategy for the synthesis of optimally orientated, self-aligned piezoelectric γ-glycine/polyvinyl alcohol (γ-glycine/PVA) films via an ultrasound-assisted process, guided by density functional theory. The first-principles calculations reveal that the negative piezoelectric effect of γ-glycine originates from the stretching and compression of glycine molecules induced by hydrogen bonding interactions. The synthetic γ-glycine/PVA films exhibit a piezoelectricity of 10.4 picocoulombs per newton and an ultrahigh piezoelectric voltage coefficient of 324 × 10