Smart Materials - Piezoelectric Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) Composites for Biomedical Applications

Advanced biocompatible piezoelectric composites have gained significant attention for the development of flexible medical devices and especially related to materials structures that mimic the natural tissue structures. Natural piezoelectricity within the human tissues is reviewed, together with nature-based piezoelectric materials, their advantages and potential for designing the structures for biomedical applications. Electrospun Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) nanofiber matrix, reinforced with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) is discussed, including specific applications in bone grafts, biosensors and energy harvesting. Processing parameters of the electrospinning fabrication technology have a strong influence on the composite piezoelectricity. Computational models of piezoelectric composites have become a major support in material design for the real case applications. Existing approaches to the numerical modeling of piezoelectric composites have been shortly reviewed toward a recent trend of AI supported modeling for providing effective composite properties, prediction and optimization of material properties and behavior, such as the output voltage and power. Polymer-based biomedical piezoelectric composites have shown excellent results in laboratory research from aspects of their flexibility and possibility to tailor their electro-mechanical properties. However, output piezoelectric signals are still much lower than in the case of traditional ceramic-based materials, including challenges related to the stability of the electric signal, signal noise, piezoelectric impedance and durability of composites with nature-based reinforcements. Future directions in custom composite design, including currently available computational models to enable more rapid development of biomedical piezoelectrics are elaborated at the end.