Enhanced piezoelectric responses in CT–PVDF–GO–TEOS composite as a flexible smart textile via the solvent casting process

Due to some of their various advantages, smart textiles have aroused great interest from specialists in recent years. A new approach has been used to manufacture a smart textile based on piezoelectric polymer with improved piezoelectric responses leading to the extraction of biomechanical energy. Here, we report a highly scalable and ultra-fast production of smart piezoelectric textiles containing graphene oxide nanosheets (GONS) dispersed in polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF). In this work, cotton textiles (CT) were functionalized using graphene oxide (GO) and PVDF as a binder to obtain a CT–PVDF–GO material. Tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) was further grafted as a coating layer to improve the surface compatibility, resulting the CT–PVDF–GO–TEOS composite. The results show that the addition of GONS significantly improves PVDF's overall crystallization rate on CT. The piezoelectric beta-phase (β) content and crystallinity degree of composite cotton fiber have been improved effectively. Consequently, this fabricated piezo-smart textile has a glorious piezoelectricity even with comparatively low coating content of PVDF–GONS–TEOS. The later leads to fabricate a piezoelectric textile device revealing an output voltage of up to 13 mV for a given frequency (f_m = 8 Hz) at a fixed strain amplitude value (0.5%). It is believed that this research may further reveal the field of energy harvesting for possible applications in the future. In addition, the experimental results that illustrate the smart textile were carried out and discussed. Finally, the approach described in this study can also be used to construct other desirable designs, for wearable low-energy-consumption sensors.