Why are Ferroelectric Polymers Difficult to Find – And Difficult to Verify

Authors

• Stephen Ducharme, University of NebraskaFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

9-17-2008

Comments

Published in 13th International Symposium on Electrets, 2008 (Sept. 15-17, 2008), pp. B0501-B0501 doi 10.1109/ISE.2008.4814005 Copyright © 2008 IEEE. Used by permission.

Abstract

The field of electrets encompasses a wide range of materials that maintain an external electric field due to alignment of internal electric dipoles or trapped charge, or both [1]. Polymers incorporating molecular dipoles constitute an important class of electrets, and so it is fitting that we consider the conditions under which such a polymer can also be considered a ferroelectric [2]. Further, because ferroelectric polymers have many uses, it is fruitful to consider how their properties depend on molecular structure [3].