Piezoelectric Bioactive Drug-Based Supramolecular Assemblies Toward Health Monitoring and Wound Healing

Bioactive molecules can self-assemble to form noncentrosymmetric supramolecular materials exhibiting piezoelectric response. However, the piezoelectricity of antibiotic-based molecular assemblies has been largely unexplored. The understanding of the structure-piezoelectricity relationship of bioactive molecular assemblies will facilitate the rational design of multifunctional piezoelectric materials. Herein, for the first time, we systematically investigated the piezoelectricity of bioactive β-lactam drug-based supramolecular assemblies, further revealing the piezoelectric-antibacterial synergy of electronic devices. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the supramolecular assemblies of different β-lactam drugs exhibited diverse ordered packing modes. Their maximum piezoelectric coefficients showed a broad range of 3.2-44.3 pC N^{- 1} as calculated by density functional theory, in which faropenem sodium (FarNa) crystals displayed the highest value due to a highly asymmetric structure and a large dipole alignment. The FarNa crystal-based piezoelectric device generated an open-circuit voltage of up to 1.08 V and was successfully integrated into a flexible sensor for rehabilitation monitoring. Furthermore, the piezoelectric response of composite films loaded with amoxicillin (AMX) or FarNa crystals could disrupt bacterial cell membranes, enhancing antibacterial activity and infected wound healing. This work explores the piezoelectric response of β-lactam drug-based assemblies, leveraging a supramolecular assembly strategy to develop biomaterials with coupled piezoelectric and biological functions.