Investigation of PVDF-TrFE composite with nanofillers for sensitivity improvement

Abstract

Polyvinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene (PVDF-TrFE) is a good candidate for wearable tactile sensing application, owing to its flexibility and easy processing. In this paper, we studied the effect of mixing silver nano-fillers with different morphologies into PVDF-TrFE to improve the extent of beta phase crystallization and the piezoelectric performance. After blending, the piezoelectric responding voltage of the composite was increased by a factor of more than three. This improvement results from the PVDF-TrFE chain arranges differently onto the nano-fillers with different morphologies, thus affects the crystallization. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.