Dielectric and piezoelectric properties of PVDF/PZT composites: A review

Abstract

Smart materials, which exhibit piezoelectricity, find an eclectic range of applications in the industry. The direct piezoelectric effect has been widely used in sensor design, and the inverse piezoelectric effect has been applied in actuator design. Ever since 1954, PZT and BaTiO 3 were widely used for sensor and actuator applications despite their toxicity, brittleness, inflexibility, etc. With the discovery of PVDF in 1969, followed by development of copolymers, a flexible, easy to process, nontoxic, high density alternate with high piezoelectric voltage coefficient was available. In the past 20 years, heterostructural materials like polymer ceramic composites, have received lot of attention, since these materials combine the excellent pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties of ceramics with the flexibility, processing facility, and strength of the polymers resulting in relatively high dielectric permittivity and breakdown strength, which are not attainable in a single phase piezoelectric material. The current review article is an attempt to provide a compendium of all the work carried out with reference to PVDF-PZT composites. The review article evaluates the effect of grain size, content and other factors under the purview of dielectric and piezoelectric properties while evaluating the sensitivity of the material for sensor application. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 55:1589-1616, 2015

Significance of Micro and Nano PZT Particles on Dielectric and Piezoelectric Properties of PZT-PVDF Composites

“…Cyclohexanone has been used as a solvent for composite preparation. There are numerous methods exist for the composite sample preparation, among which hot press method has been opted for this study [3,5]. The samples were prepared in the form of pellets with fixed dimension [2,5,10].…”

“…Ferroelectric ceramic-polymer composites are one such material which is under the study by many researchers around the world. Ferroelectric materials possess excellent dielectric and piezoelectric properties which make them useful for a diverse range of applications [2][3][4][5]. Though ferroelectric ceramics have much better dielectric and piezoelectric properties as a single phase material, it has its own limitations for high pressure applications which constrains their use as raw material.…”

Poling piezoelectric (K,Na,Li)NbO3-polydimethylsiloxane composites

“…Composites of piezoceramic particles in a polymer matrix are promising materials for flexible energy harvesting and sensing applications due to their ease of processing matched with favorable mechanical properties and low dielectric loss [1,2]. Existing piezoelectric materials, based on lead zirconium titanate (PZT) ceramics, raise ecological concerns and demonstrate poor mechanical properties with typically high stiffness (»60 GPa) and low strain at break, limiting their application within curved devices [1].…”

“…Existing piezoelectric materials, based on lead zirconium titanate (PZT) ceramics, raise ecological concerns and demonstrate poor mechanical properties with typically high stiffness (»60 GPa) and low strain at break, limiting their application within curved devices [1]. PVDF polymer based piezoelectrics demonstrate favorable piezoelectric performance at stiffnesses of »1 GPa, yet continue to exhibit high dielectric losses above 5% [2]. In piezoceramic-polymer composites the electrical and mechanical performance can be tailored by adjusting the composition, internal structure and volume fraction of the two phases [3].…”

Dielectric properties of composite based on ferroelectric copolymer of poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) and ferroelectric ceramics of barium lead zirconate titanate

“…By now, the attention of many researchers is focused on ferroelectric composites containing the polar polymer (or copolymer) and ferroelectric perovskites like the lead zirconate titanate (PZT), barium titanate and others. [9][10][11][12][13][14] These ferroelectric crystal inclusions can significantly increase the dielectric parameters and allow producing the materials with high-k for the dielectric applications. Also, the presence of ceramics in the polymer matrix leads to a significant improvement in pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties.…”