Domain Analysis of Piezoelectric Films for Energy Harvesting and Structural Health Monitoring

A poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)-based ferroelectric polymer is one of the promising materials to study the energy harvesting and transduction properties in response to its piezoelectric phase. Recently, much research has been done to increase the β phase of the ferroelectric polymers, which is often linked with the increment of the piezoelectric coefficient, d33, to make the ferroelectric polymers suitable for use in energy harvesting and structural health monitoring systems. To investigate the piezoelectric response of the ferroelectric blend system, the acousto-pressure response (i.e., change in voltage in response to sound pressure and change in sound pressure in response to the applied voltage) is measured and simulated. After the spectroscopic analysis of the ferroelectric polymer blend system, it is observed that the transducers, which have balanced proportion of α and β phases, outperformed in their transduction and energy harvesting properties. We have reported that the blend AK = 0.3 corresponds to the 0.5 mPa pressure while producing a 109.2 dB SPL sound. The higher acousto-pressure response of the AK = 0.3 blend is reported due to its antiferroelectric phase, which is due to its balance proposition of α and β phases, which is due to the all-trans (TTTT) and trans and gauche (TG+ and TG–) chain interaction during its blending. In this study, the correlation between the α (TG+ and TG–) and β (TTT) phases and their antiferroelectric and piezoelectric characteristics using the spectroscopic, dielectric, and polarization behaviors is studied using their real-time graphic simulations. Estimation of the acousto-pressure response for flexible ferroelectric polymers is helpful to develop an acoustic-based structural health monitoring system for various applications.