Mechanical & Materials Engineering, Department of

 

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2019

Citation

Published in Microscopy and Microanalysis 25 (S2), 2090-2091

doi:10.1017/S1431927619011188

Comments

Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press. Used by permission.

Abstract

Poly (vinylidenefluoride) (PVDF) and its copolymers, are well-recognized electroactive polymers. The PVDF polymer can crystallize in a quasi-hexagonal close-packed “β-phase” structure with the dipoles of all chains aligned with maximum spontaneous polarization [1-3]. Due to the limited availability of quantitative methods for nanoscale molecular structure and mechanical analysis, the polymer organization has not been fully optimized. For such ferroelectric polymers, the influence of nanoscale molecular structure on mechanical response is not well understood. In this paper, we demonstrate nanoscale characterization and measurement techniques, by comprehensive integrating atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), nano-infrared (nanoIR) spectroscopy, nanoindentation, chemical nanoIR mapping, and force mapping, to probe the localized morphology, molecular structure, molecular orientation, and mechanical stiffness distribution at the nanoscale

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