On the piezoelectricity of anionic collagen films

Abstract

In this paper, we report results of a study of the physicochemical, dielectric and piezoelectric properties of anionic and native collagen films, considering the development of new biomaterials which have potential applications in coating of cardiovascular prostheses, support for cellular growth and in systems for controlled drug delivery. The piezoelectric strain tensor element d14, the elastic constant s55, and the dielectric permittivity ϵ11 were measured for the anionic and native collagen films. It was observed that the collagen samples submitted to the alkaline treatment present lower thermal stability than those made from native collagen. However, the treated samples present a higher piezoelectricity compared with the native collagen. The frequency constant fL and the piezoelectric strain element d14, obtained for the alkaline-treated sample (72h), present the highest values for the samples under study (444.1kHzm and 0.079pC/N, respectively). We believe that the alkaline treatment led to an increase of the organization of the microscopic fiber structure of the sample, which could result in an increase of the piezoelectricity.