TY - JOUR
T1 - Piezoelectric Property of Electrospun PVDF Nanofibers as Linking Tips of Artificial-Hair-Cell Structures in Cochlea
AU - Tabari, Rana Sabouni
AU - Chen, Yu
AU - Thummavichai, Kunyapat
AU - Zhang, Yan
AU - Saadi, Zakaria
AU - Neves, Ana I.S.
AU - Xia, Yongde
AU - Zhu, Yanqiu
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by EPSRC grants (Grant number: EP/N034627/1, EP/S019855/1) for providing the Scholarship support for RST.
PY - 2022/4/26
Y1 - 2022/4/26
N2 - The death of hair cells and damage of natural tip links is one of the main causes of hearing-loss disability, and the development of an advanced artificial hearing aid holds the key to assisting those suffering from hearing loss. This study demonstrates the potential of using electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) fibers to serve as the artificial tip links, for long-term hearing-aid-device development based on their piezoelectric properties. We have shown that the electrospun PVDF-fiber web, consisting of fibers ranging from 30–220 nm in diameter with high β-phase content, possesses the high piezoresponse of 170 mV. Analyses based on combined characterization methods including SEM, TEM, XRD, FTIR, Raman, DSC, XPS, PFM and piezoelectricity have confirmed that an optimized value of 15 wt.% PVDF could act as an effective candidate for a tip-link connector in a vibration-frequency prototype. Based on this easily reproducible electrospinning technique and the multifunctionalities of the resulting PVDF fibers, this fundamental study may shed light on the bio-inspired design of artificial, self-powered, high performance, hair-cell-like sensors in cochlea to tackle the hearing loss issue.
AB - The death of hair cells and damage of natural tip links is one of the main causes of hearing-loss disability, and the development of an advanced artificial hearing aid holds the key to assisting those suffering from hearing loss. This study demonstrates the potential of using electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) fibers to serve as the artificial tip links, for long-term hearing-aid-device development based on their piezoelectric properties. We have shown that the electrospun PVDF-fiber web, consisting of fibers ranging from 30–220 nm in diameter with high β-phase content, possesses the high piezoresponse of 170 mV. Analyses based on combined characterization methods including SEM, TEM, XRD, FTIR, Raman, DSC, XPS, PFM and piezoelectricity have confirmed that an optimized value of 15 wt.% PVDF could act as an effective candidate for a tip-link connector in a vibration-frequency prototype. Based on this easily reproducible electrospinning technique and the multifunctionalities of the resulting PVDF fibers, this fundamental study may shed light on the bio-inspired design of artificial, self-powered, high performance, hair-cell-like sensors in cochlea to tackle the hearing loss issue.
KW - electrospun PVDF fiber
KW - hearing loss
KW - piezoelectric properties
KW - tip links in cochlea
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85128759309&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/nano12091466
DO - 10.3390/nano12091466
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85128759309
SN - 2079-4991
VL - 12
JO - Nanomaterials
JF - Nanomaterials
IS - 9
M1 - 1466
ER -