The electrical conductivity of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) electrospun nanofibers is naturally low. For an electrical device application, it requires high enough conductivity. The objective of this study is to improve the electrical conductivity of electrospun PVA nanofibers with and without poly (3,4-ethylenedioxytriophene): polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) by exposure polar solvent of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). For this purpose, the nanofibers were deposited on a substrate with patterned electrodes. The distance between two electrodes is 2 mm. The sheet resistance of the PVA nanofibers was measured by using two-point probe connected to a source measurement unit of Keithley SMU-2400. As a result, the conductivity of PVA electrospun nanofibers increases from 0.03 μS/cm to 1.20 μS/cm by increasing the PVA concentration from 8 to 10 wt%. More significant improvement is also achieved by mixing PVA and PEDOT:PSS to be 110 μS/cm after being exposure DMSO. This improvement has been confirmed using the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images, where a solvent-induced fusion occurs at the nanofiber junction points after DMSO treatment. The stability of electrical conductivity, however, of electrospun PVA nanofibers is better than that of electrospun PVA/PEDOT:PSS nanofibers after exposure DMSO.
A strain sensor based on poly (3,4-ethylenedioxytriophene): poly (styrene sulfonate)/poly (vinyl alcohol) (PEDOT: PSS/PVA) nanofiber has been successfully fabricated by electrospinning technique. Patterned copper wires were deposited on the mica flexible substrate with the distance of 1 mm. The sensor then characterized with various strain by one side bending. The conductivity of as-spun nanofiber mats can be adjusted from 0.03 to 1.2 µS cm-1 with various concentration of PVA and depends on its structure and its nanofiber diameter. The sensing mechanism of nanofiber-based strain sensor is due to the common piezoelectric effect of PEDOT:PSS polymer and unique nanostructure of nanofiber mats. When the sensor stretched, the length of nanofiber increase affecting the geometrical change and lead the increasing in resistance. This sensor shows good repeatability with gauge factor of 17. The performance of PEDOT:PSS/PVA nanofiber based strain sensor make nanofiber mats as promising alternative materials for strain sensor application.
The constant need for advanced materials led by modern research continues the exploitation of old remedies and innovation to find new solutions. The use of ionic liquids (ILs) as solvents has revolutionized modern chemical research. The non‐toxic green technology has inspired new paradigms in chemical reactions and synthesis. Developing nontoxic materials for industrial and biomedical applications has endorsed the use of ILs in synthesis and fabrication. In terms of biomedical materials, the exploration for novel technologies to deal with chronic and nonhealing injuries desires degradable materials. One of the vastly used biomaterials is cellulose, which is nondegradable on its own unless digested by special enzymes produced by bacteria in nature. Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a naturally occurring more refined and purified form of cellulose which again is nondegradable on its own. Looking for technologies that can modify the BC in situ or ex situ is a challenge. This review is bound to give insight into the current scientific research being conducted to render BC degradable for biomedical applications. The data has been collected through Clarivate analysis, Google search, PubMed Central Identifier (PMCID), and Research Gate. The lack of available literature on this topic allowed us to include all the articles related to the subject as old as 1988 onwards.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.