Proceedings Article | 13 August 2003
Proc. SPIE. 5053, Smart Structures and Materials 2003: Active Materials: Behavior and Mechanics
KEYWORDS: FT-IR spectroscopy, Chemical species, Polymers, Crystals, Dielectrics, Polymerization, Thulium, Chlorine, Ferroelectric polymers, Virtual colonoscopy
This paper discusses a new family of ferroelectric polymorphs fluoro-terpolymers comprising vinylidene difluoride (VDF), trifluoroethylene (TrFE), and a chloro-containing third monomer, including vinyl chloride (VC), 1,1-chlorofluoroethylene (CFE), chlorodifluoroethylene (CDFE), chlorotrifluoroethylene (CTFE), with narrow molecular weight and composition distributions. The slightly bulky chlorine atom serves as a kink in the polymer chain, which spontaneously alters the chain conformation and crystalline structure. Comparing with the corresponding VDF/TrFE copolymer, the slowly increasing chlorine content (< 8 mol% of ter-monomer) gradually changes the all-trans chain conformation to tttg+tttg- conformation, without significant reduction of overall crystallinity. Curie (F-P) phase transition temperature between the mixed ferroelectric phases and paraelectric phase (tg+tg- conformation) also gradually reduced to near ambient temperature, with very small activation energy. Consequently, the terpolymers show high dielectric constant (>80) and large electrostrictive response (>5%) at ambient temperature, and exhibiting common ferroelectric relaxor behaviors with a broad dielectric peak that shifted toward higher temperatures as the frequency increased, and a slim polarization hysteresis loop at ambient temperature.
