High diffusion barrier and piezoelectric nanocomposites based on polyvinylidene fluoride‐trifluoroethylene copolymer and hydrophobized clay |
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Authors: | Sara Dalle Vacche Fabiane Oliveira Olha Sereda Antonia Neels Alex Dommann Dragan Damjanovic Yves Leterrier |
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Affiliation: | 1. Laboratory for Processing of Advanced Composites (LPAC), école Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland;2. Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique, Jaquet Droz 1, Neuchatel, Switzerland;3. Center for X‐ray Analytics, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, überlandstrasse 129, Dübendorf, Switzerland;4. Group for Ferroelectrics and Functional Oxides, école Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland |
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Abstract: | Nanocomposites based on polyvinylidene fluoride–trifluoroethylene copolymer and up to 4 vol % of hydrophobized clay nanoparticles are investigated. The structure, piezoelectric properties, and oxygen permeability of solvent cast films are analyzed before and after annealing above the Curie temperature of the polymer. Exfoliation of the clay takes place at concentrations up to 1 vol %, beyond which it rapidly drops and is absent at a concentration of 4 vol %. The presence of clay does not change the crystallinity of the polymer, but leads to a threefold decrease of the oxygen permeability at a concentration of 0.5 vol %. Annealing at 130 °C increases the crystallinity, the proportion of β phase up to 94%, and the piezoelectric coefficient by 20–40% at clay fractions below 1 vol %. Annealing also leads to a remarkable 3‐ to 10‐fold decrease of O2 permeability and to intriguing changes of the activation energy for O2 transport, which decreases from 56 kJ/mol for the as‐cast polymer to below 10 kJ/mol for the polymer and exfoliated composite. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2017 , 55, 1828–1836 |
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Keywords: | clay nanocomposite permeability piezoelectric PVDF– TrFE |
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