Giant flexoelectric response of uniformly dispersed BT-PVDF composite films induced by SDS-assisted treatment

Yujie Wei; Ying Yu; Yuxin Zuo; Zhikun Li; Zhiqing Gu; Hongli Chen; Yang Yang; Chuncheng Zuo

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.107852

Giant flexoelectric response of uniformly dispersed BT-PVDF composite films induced by SDS-assisted treatment

iScience. 2023 Sep 9;26(10):107852. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107852. eCollection 2023 Oct 20.

Authors

Yujie Wei¹, Ying Yu², Yuxin Zuo³, Zhikun Li¹, Zhiqing Gu², Hongli Chen¹, Yang Yang⁴, Chuncheng Zuo^{2

4}

Affiliations

¹ School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310000, China.
² College of Information Science and Engineering, Jiaxing University, Jiaxing, Zhejiang 314000, China.
³ Jiaxing Nanhu University, Jiaxing 314001, China.
⁴ School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130000, China.

Abstract

Polymer-ceramic composites are commonly used as flexoelectric films. In existing studies, the flexoelectric effect of composites are generally improved by adjusting the material structures or adding ferroelectric materials. Further improvement of flexoelectric response has encountered a bottleneck. Considering from a new perspective, this study innovatively proposes to prepare the uniformly dispersed BT-PVDF composite films with giant flexoelectric response by surfactant SDS-assisted treatment. According to the engineering applications, tilt sensors have been fabricated with the SDS/BT-PVDF composite films. The prepared tilt sensors can accurately sense the tilt change in a small-angle range (0-10°) between the coaxial connecting parts, the response signal changes significantly (49.25-72.35 mV/°), and the response speed can reach 0.166 s. The research provides a new idea for improving the flexoelectric response and also paves a way for developing tilt sensors through a low-cost, facile, and reliable method, showing potential applications including bending sensing and structural health monitoring.

Keywords: Applied physics; Materials science; Physics.