Pressure-sensing properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes covered with a corona-poled piezoelectric polymer

摘要

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) have been studied extensively as sensing elements for chemical and biochemical sensors because of their excellent electrical properties, their ultrahigh ratio of surface area to volume, and the consequent extremely high sensitivity of their surface to the surrounding environment. The extremely high sensitivity indicates that SWNTs can operate as excellent transducers when combined with piezoelectric materials. In this paper, we present a touch sensor based on SWNT thin-film transistors (SWNT-TFTs) covered with a thin film of the piezoelectric polymer poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)). Devices were fabricated by spin-coating a P(VDF-TrFE) layer on an SWNT-TFT, which was followed by in situ corona poling to polarize the P(VDF-TrFE) layer. We studied the effect of the corona polarity on the device characteristics and revealed that poling with a negative corona discharge induced a large amount of hole doping in the SWNTs and improved the touch-sensing performance of the devices, while a positive discharge had a negligible effect. The poled devices exhibited regular, stable, and positive drain current modulation in response to intermittent pressing, and the response was proportional to the magnitude of the applied pressure, suggesting that it was caused by the piezoelectric effect of the polarized P(VDF-TrFE) layer. Furthermore, we also fabricated a device using horizontally aligned SWNTs with a lower SWNT density as an alternative transducer to an SWNT thin film, which demonstrated sensitivity as high as 70%/MPa.