Study of Stiffness and flexible sensing performance of poly-vinylidene fluoride (PVDF) a piezo polymer with varying polarization components

Free standing PVDF thin films synthesized from varying precursor viscosities was fabricated through solution casting method. Polarization tuning from dominant in-plane to out-of-plane for an optimum viscosity range was observed and further its effect on the stiffness property was also studied. It was found that young’s modulus increases with enhancement in in-plane polarization within the optimum range, However beyond the optimum range where polarization was negligible the young’s modulus was observed to be very high. Effects of polarization tuning also observed on the device performance. The device with dominant in-plane polarization has the high stiffness as well as piezoelectric response whereas device with out-of-plane polarization has least stiffness and piezoelectric response. Thus correlation between viscosity as well as polarization on stiffness and piezoelectric response of device was observed.