Enhanced piezoelectric response of PVDF by incorporating of BaTiO3 nanoparticles and surface treatment

This work aims to enhance the piezoelectric response of PVDF films through the incorporating of BaTiO3 nanoparticles as well as corona poling and cold plasma treatments. An optimized wet ball-milling process was used to fabricate BaTiO3 nanoparticles using commercial submicron BaTiO3 particles. In addition, a fluoroalkyl silane (FAS) solution was used to functionalize the surface of BaTiO3 nanoparticles to prevent the agglomeration of the nanoparticles and induce more affinity with the PVDF matrix. The morphology of PVDF-BaTiO3 composite films was characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Fourier transforms infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and X-ray diffractometry (XRD) were used to investigate the phase analysis of samples. The results revealed that incorporating the functionalized BaTiO3 nanoparticles within the PVDF layer increases the piezoelectric response of pure PVDF from 1.05 mV to 1.46 mV which is more than that of the sample with incorporated micron size BaTiO3 (1.28 mV). Cold plasma treatment increased the wettability of PVDF, significantly, which reduced the water contact angle from 71° to 21°. In addition, the corona polarization enhanced the piezoelectric response of the samples, which increased the output voltage to 1.53 mV.