Quantum modelling of poly(vinylidene fluoride)

Abstract

Although extensive studies have been conducted on poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) because of its ferroelectric, pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties, the effects of inverted monomer units, on the molecular scale properties of this polymer are not fully understood. Therefore, we have used a method combining molecular dynamics with a self-consistent semi-empirical quantum mechanical method to study the effects of both chain length and monomer inversion on the electronic properties of individual PVDF chains, such as the dipole moment and the polarizability. The effects of monomer inversion on the infrared spectra are also discussed. Our results suggest that alpha and beta polymorphs of PVDF have dipole moment per monomer unit that varies (increases for beta-PVDF and decreases for alpha-PVDF) with the chain length but converges to a nearly constant value for chain lengths greater than a certain value, whereas chain length does not seem to produce any significant effect on molecular polarizability of both polymorphs. Our calculations also suggest a decrease of the dipole moment with increasing inversion monomer defect concentration but no significant effect has been predicted for molecular polarizability, except when two or more isolated defects are present in the same chain. The presence of monomer inverted defects decreases the intensity of the infrared peaks attributable to defect-free chains and gives rise to new peaks. The number and frequency of the defect peaks depends both on the isolated defect concentration and molecular chain structure.