Production of Polar β-Glycine Nanofibers with Enhanced Nonlinear Optical and Piezoelectric Properties

Abstract

Electrospinning of an aqueous poly(vinyl alcohol) and glycine solution has been used to produce nanofibers with an embedded crystalline glycine exclusively in the form of the β polymorph. The β-glycine nanocrystals are highly oriented within the polymer fibers and present good polar properties. Piezoelectric and nonlinear optical responses have been quantitatively examined showing piezoelectric coefficient d eff = 12.5 pm/V and an effective nonlinear optical susceptibility two times greater than that of potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP). Additionally, although bulk β-glycine is metastable at room temperature, when confined inside the polymeric nanofibers, it is shown to be remarkably stable.

Probing ferroelectric behaviour in charge-transfer organic meta-nitroaniline

“…Furthermore, recently this technique has been applied for studying the polar properties in soft biological systems. 3,7,[23][24][25][26] In this letter, we demonstrate the evidence of a room temperature ferroelectric behaviour in organic charge-transfer (m-NA) crystals, as shown by PFM.…”

Piezoelectricity and ferroelectricity in biomaterials: Molecular modeling and piezoresponse force microscopy measurements

“…Among them, the most interesting is glycine. As it has been shown recently that microcrystals based on glycine reveal both piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties 40,56,57 and thus present significant interest for biomedical and electronic applications. Glycine (the simplest amino acid from all existing) is one of basic and important elements in biology as it serves as a building block for many biological macromolecules, such as peptides or proteins.…”

“…[58][59][60] However, there are only few attempts to evaluate piezoelectric properties of these materials. 40,56 aÀglycine has a centrosymmetric structure (space group P21/n) and consequently cannot have piezoelectric property (the individual molecular dipole of glycine molecule is compensated with that in opposite direction), while the c-and b-glycine possess noncentrosymmetric structure (with two differently formed and oriented by individual dipoles of each glycine molecules). Therefore, they were studied in a more detail in a series of papers.…”

“…Therefore, they were studied in a more detail in a series of papers. 40,56,57,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67] One of the specific features of all glycine crystals phases is related to its hydrogen-bonded network system. According to the modeling results of b-glycine, 62 there are two main type of H-bonds: within layer: H-bond with length L % 1.179 Å and inter-layer: H-bond with length L $ 2.75 Å .…”

Energy harvesting from nanofibers of hybrid organic ferroelectric dabcoHReO4

“…strong polarized emission 16 or enhanced polar properties. 17 This highly anisotropic alignment of active components is expected to bring in novel possibilities in the view of potential applications. Recent success in the electrospinning of peptides and polymer-free materials is very encouraging for fabrication of a variety of organic nanofibers with strong p p or H-bonding interactions that can serve as a molecular scaffolding for the stabilization of continuous fiber-like structures.…”