Study of ferroelectric transitions of vinylidene fluoride–trifluoroethylene copolymers

Thermally stimulated depolarization (TSD) measurements with superimposed “piezoelectric noise” allow us to identify the ferroelectric-to-paraelectric phase transition in vinylidene fluoride–trifluoroethylene (VDF/TrFE) copolymers with different molar ratios. In addition, a new transition which did not change the ferroelectric features of the material has also been detected. Long relaxation processes always accompany these transitions. By the initial-rise method we calculated the activation energies for these relaxations as 0.73 eV for the ferroelectric-to-paraelectric transition and 0.33 eV for the ferroelectric-to-ferroelectric one.