A brief review on hydrophone based on PVDF piezoelectric film

Abstract

Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) has been a kind of particularly attractive piezoelectric materials for its excellent piezoelectric property. Due to its light weight, impedance characteristic is very similar to water, and good mechanical flexibility, PVDF piezoelectric film is very suitable for the field of hydrophones. Although the piezoelectric ceramic hydrophone has been widely used, but due to the disadvantage of high inherent frequency and fragile characteristics of the piezoelectric ceramics slice, the development of the piezoelectric hydrophone is limited. The application of PVDF piezoelectric film has solved many problems encountered in the use of piezoelectric ceramics. In this article, the classification of hydrophone is briefly introduced at first, and then the current status of hydrophone research is involved. And then, by analyzing the electrical equivalent model of the PVDF piezoelectric sensitive unit, the signal conditioning circuit of the PVDF piezoelectric hydrophone is summarized as well. After that, the current status of PVDF hydrophone research is discussed. Finally, a summary of all the work listed in this article is given and an outlook of PVDF hydrophone is proposed.