Ink-jet printing of ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) copolymers

摘要

Poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TrFE)] copolymers are well known for their excellent ferroelectric and other related properties and they are being exploited as active components in many microdevices such as ferroelectric memory cells and infrared sensors. Compared with conventional photolithography, ink-jet printing provides a low-cost versatile method to fabricate polymer micro-devices. In this paper, the influences of driving waveform at the jet head, ink concentration, substrate chemistry, and the solvent quality on the printed P(VDF-TrFE) dots were investigated. It was found that well-defined P(VDF-TrFE) micro-dots with diameter of less than 30 μm and thickness of ～1 μm can be printed by using a mixed solvent system, consisting of a good solvent with relatively low boiling temperature and a poor solvent with high boiling temperature, on perfluorinated hydrophobic gold surface. The printed P(VDF-TrFE) micro-dots possess crystallinity comparable to that of the bulk sample, suggesting that ink-jet printing technology is a promising micro-fabrication technology for manufacturing P(VDF-TrFE)-based micro-sensors and other micro-devices.