Facile fabrication of highly ordered poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) nanodot arrays for organic ferroelectric memory

Abstract

Nano-patterned ferroelectric materials have attracted significant attention as the presence of two or more thermodynamically equivalent switchable polarization states can be employed in many applications such as non-volatile memory. In this work, a simple and effective approach for fabrication of highly ordered poly(vinylidene fluoride–trifluoroethylene) P(VDF-TrFE) nanodot arrays is demonstrated. By using a soft polydimethylsiloxane mold, we successfully transferred the 2D array pattern from the initial monolayer of colloidal polystyrene nanospheres to the imprinted P(VDF-TrFE) films via nanoimprinting. The existence of a preferred orientation of the copolymer chain after nanoimprinting was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectra. Local polarization switching behavior was measured by piezoresponse force microscopy, and each nanodot showed well-formed hysteresis curve and butterfly loop with a coercive field of ∼62.5 MV/m. To illustrate the potential application of these ordered P(VDF-TrFE) nanodot arrays, the writing and reading process as non-volatile memory was demonstrated at a relatively low voltage. As such, our results offer a facile and promising route to produce arrays of ferroelectric polymer nanodots with improved piezoelectric functionality.