Abstract
The polymer poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF–TrFE)) is highly desirable for piezoelectric and ferroelectric functional applications owing to its considerable electromechanical activity and reliable electrical polarization. However, a clear understanding of the effect of the thermal annealing on the electromechanical behavior and polarization nature of ultrathin crystalline P(VDF–TrFE) films is severely lacking. Here we report the thermally induced structural reorganization, and piezo- and ferroelectric features in the ultrathin P(VDF–TrFE) films. On applying a 40 °C annealing treatment, the polarization-patterned electrostrictive strain reaches the highest value of ∼53.7 pm. Besides, the ultrathin film exhibits a highly ordered antiparallel dipole alignment, the highest local piezoelectric activity, and an improved polarization relaxation time. The optimum film properties are achieved owing to a high degree of polymer chains oriented parallel to the substrate plane. Our results can reveal a promising avenue for nano-electro-mechanical and nano-ferroelectric electronic applications using ultrathin P(VDF–TrFE) films.
Highlights
P(VDF–TrFE) was dissolved in a mixture solvent with N,Ndimethylformamide (DMF) and immiscible p-anisaldehyde that served as a major solvent and an antisolvent, respectively
We previously showed that an antisolvent-assisted-crystallization technique can be used to fabricate ultrathin crystalline are corresponding to the characteristic of a- and b-phases, respectively (Fig. 3e)
The grazing-incident X-ray diffraction (GI-XRD) diffractogram can con rm this crystalline structure in our ultrathin P(VDF–TrFE) lms. These results indicate that a portion of a-phase still remains and an a- to b-phase transformation occurs in our ultrathin lm at 50 C
Summary
The discovery of piezoelectricity and ferroelectricity in poly(vinylidene uoride-co-tri uoroethylene) (P(VDF–TrFE)) offers an advantageous opportunity to electrically manipulate its functional properties.[1,2] The molecular ferroelectric polymer P(VDF– TrFE) can be light weight, highly stretchable, bio-compatible, capable of adaptivity, and stimuli-sensitive, which guarantee it a steady rise towards personal and portable electronics.[3,4,5,6,7] thanks to an exceptional electromechanical activity and large permanent electrical polarization, P(VDF–TrFE) is worth exploring as a competitive candidate in sensing systems, transducer devices, and non-volatile memory cells.[8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18] Note that, a severe bottleneck for practical applications of P(VDF–TrFE) in advanced electronic technologies is the achievement of a reasonable mechanical and electrical performance; to decrease the lm thickness is greatly important to alleviate the power consumption and unreliable repeatability of functional elements caused by the high-voltage operation.[19,20,21,22] traditional approaches such as electrospinning, Langmuir– Schaefer (LS) deposition, nanocon nement, and addition of crystallization-inducing agents suffer from limited applicability to enhance the lm properties due to a degradation of ultrathin lm quality.[11,23,24,25,26,27] for an ultrathin polycrystalline P(VDF–TrFE) lm under a special constrained geometry, the lm. The grain and intergrain regions in our ultrathin P(VDF–TrFE) lms can both exhibit clear signatures of the ferroelectric polarization states and piezoelectric deformation behaviours.
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