Piezoelectric Polylactide-based Materials for Biomedical Applications: Fundamentals, Fabrication Strategies and Characterization

Abstract

Recent biomedical applications demand piezoelectric polylactide (PLA) with biodegradable and biocompatible properties for tissue regeneration, implantable force sensors, and energy harvesting devices. Since PLA is Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved and well-established in various commercial biomedical implants, it is of major interest to dominate the challenging fabrication of piezoelectric PLA films, fibers, and scaffolds to induce high chain orientation and crystallinity. Three different fabrication strategies, including cold drawing from the solid state, melt spinning from the melt, and electrospinning from the solution, were optimized to produce piezoelectric chain morphology. Furthermore, several drawbacks, including the extreme brittleness, fast chain relaxation, weak piezoelectric coefficient, and unfavorable shear piezoelectric mode of PLA, were addressed and overcome by this work to pave the way for the application of piezoelectric PLA material in biomedical devices.