Abstract
Polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) and its copolymers are promising electroactive polymers showing outstanding ferroelectric, piezoelectric, and pyroelectric properties in comparison with other organic materials. They have shown promise for applications in flexible sensors, energy-harvesting transducers, electronic skins, and flexible memories due to their biocompatibility, high chemical stability, bending and stretching abilities. PVDF can crystallize at five different phases of α, β, γ, δ, and ε; however, ferro-, piezo-, and pyroelectric properties of this polymer only originate from polar phases of β and γ. In this research, we reported fabrication of PVDF inkjet inks with enhanced β-phase crystallinity by incorporating barium titanate nanoparticles (BaTiO3). BaTiO3 not only acts as a nucleating agent to induce β-phase crystallinity, but it also improves the electric properties of PVDF through synergistic a ferroelectric polarization effect. PVDF-BaTiO3 nanocomposite inkjet inks with different BaTiO3 concentrations were prepared by wet ball milling coupled with bath ultrasonication. It was observed that the sample with 5 w% of BaTiO3 had the highest β-phase crystallinity, while in higher ratios overall crystallinity deteriorated progressively, leading to more amorphous structures.
Highlights
Direct printing with nanomaterial inks has gained much interest lately due to its potential in fabricating flexible electronic components such as sensors [1], actuators [2], batteries [3], supercapacitors [4], transistors [5], etc
Drop ejection in a DOD inkjet printer is the result of consecutive deformation of piezoelectric ceramics in the printhead, which generates pressure pulses to push ink droplets out of the nozzles
With fluids that are too viscous, the piezoelectric pulses cannot overcome viscous dissipation and the energy associated with forming a new surface, which leads to no ejection [8]
Summary
Direct printing with nanomaterial inks has gained much interest lately due to its potential in fabricating flexible electronic components such as sensors [1], actuators [2], batteries [3], supercapacitors [4], transistors [5], etc. Polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF), a thermoplastic polymer, was the material of choice due to its high chemical and mechanical stability and outstanding ferroelectric, piezoelectric, and pyroelectric properties in comparison with other organic materials [9]. These interesting properties lead to its wide application in electronic devices such as sensors, actuators, and capacitors [10,11]. We reported a method that uses BaTiO3 as nucleating filler to enhance β-phase crystallinity of PVDF for inkjet printing. BaTiO3 could enhance polar-phase crystallinity of PVDF by acting as a nucleating agent, which resulted in enhancing the final piezoelectric performance of the obtained film. Unlike metal inks, which require a sintering step to remove the binders, fabricated piezoelectric ink does not require any post-processing steps, since both the binder and the particles are piezoelectric, enabling printed devices on substrates with low thermal resistivity
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