IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v562y2018i7725d10.1038_s41586-018-0550-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ferroelectric polymers exhibiting behaviour reminiscent of a morphotropic phase boundary

Author

Listed:
  • Yang Liu

    (The Pennsylvania State University)

  • Haibibu Aziguli

    (The Pennsylvania State University)

  • Bing Zhang

    (North Carolina State University)

  • Wenhan Xu

    (The Pennsylvania State University)

  • Wenchang Lu

    (North Carolina State University)

  • J. Bernholc

    (North Carolina State University)

  • Qing Wang

    (The Pennsylvania State University)

Abstract

Piezoelectricity—the direct interconversion between mechanical and electrical energies—is usually remarkably enhanced at the morphotropic phase boundary of ferroelectric materials1–4, which marks a transition region in the phase diagram of piezoelectric materials and bridges two competing phases with distinct symmetries1,5. Such enhancement has enabled the recent development of various lead and lead-free piezoelectric perovskites with outstanding piezoelectric properties for use in actuators, transducers, sensors and energy-harvesting applications5–8. However, the morphotropic phase boundary has never been observed in organic materials, and the absence of effective approaches to improving the intrinsic piezoelectric responses of polymers9,10 considerably hampers their application to flexible, wearable and biocompatible devices. Here we report stereochemically induced behaviour in ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)) copolymers, which is similar to that observed at morphotropic phase boundaries in perovskites. We reveal that compositionally tailored tacticity (the stereochemical arrangement of chiral centres related to the TrFE monomers11,12) can lead to intramolecular order-to-disorder evolution in the crystalline phase and thus to an intermediate transition region that is reminiscent of the morphotropic phase boundary, where competing ferroelectric and relaxor properties appear simultaneously. Our first-principles calculations confirm the crucial role of chain tacticity in driving the formation of this transition region via structural competition between the trans-planar and 3/1-helical phases. We show that the P(VDF-TrFE) copolymer with the morphotropic composition exhibits a longitudinal piezoelectric coefficient of −63.5 picocoulombs per newton, outperforming state-of-the-art piezoelectric polymers10. Given the flexibility in the molecular design and synthesis of organic ferroelectric materials, this work opens up the way for the development of scalable, high-performance piezoelectric polymers.

Suggested Citation

  • Yang Liu & Haibibu Aziguli & Bing Zhang & Wenhan Xu & Wenchang Lu & J. Bernholc & Qing Wang, 2018. "Ferroelectric polymers exhibiting behaviour reminiscent of a morphotropic phase boundary," Nature, Nature, vol. 562(7725), pages 96-100, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:562:y:2018:i:7725:d:10.1038_s41586-018-0550-z
    DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0550-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0550-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41586-018-0550-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xinhui Li & Shan He & Yanda Jiang & Jian Wang & Yi Yu & Xiaofei Liu & Feng Zhu & Yimei Xie & Youyong Li & Cheng Ma & Zhonghui Shen & Baowen Li & Yang Shen & Xin Zhang & Shujun Zhang & Ce-Wen Nan, 2023. "Unraveling bilayer interfacial features and their effects in polar polymer nanocomposites," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-10, December.
    2. Yuanjie Su & Weixiong Li & Xiaoxing Cheng & Yihao Zhou & Shuai Yang & Xu Zhang & Chunxu Chen & Tiannan Yang & Hong Pan & Guangzhong Xie & Guorui Chen & Xun Zhao & Xiao Xiao & Bei Li & Huiling Tai & Ya, 2022. "High-performance piezoelectric composites via β phase programming," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    3. Mengfan Guo & Erxiang Xu & Houbing Huang & Changqing Guo & Hetian Chen & Shulin Chen & Shan He & Le Zhou & Jing Ma & Zhonghui Shen & Ben Xu & Di Yi & Peng Gao & Ce-Wen Nan & Neil. D. Mathur & Yang She, 2024. "Electrically and mechanically driven rotation of polar spirals in a relaxor ferroelectric polymer," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    4. Yuzhong Hu & Kaushik Parida & Hao Zhang & Xin Wang & Yongxin Li & Xinran Zhou & Samuel Alexander Morris & Weng Heng Liew & Haomin Wang & Tao Li & Feng Jiang & Mingmin Yang & Marin Alexe & Zehui Du & C, 2022. "Bond engineering of molecular ferroelectrics renders soft and high-performance piezoelectric energy harvesting materials," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    5. Yao Wang & Chen Huang & Ziwei Cheng & Zhenghao Liu & Yuan Zhang & Yantao Zheng & Shulin Chen & Jie Wang & Peng Gao & Yang Shen & Chungang Duan & Yuan Deng & Ce-Wen Nan & Jiangyu Li, 2024. "Halide Perovskite Inducing Anomalous Nonvolatile Polarization in Poly(vinylidene fluoride)-based Flexible Nanocomposites," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    6. Bo Li & Chuanyang Cai & Yang Liu & Fang Wang & Bin Yang & Qikai Li & Pengxiang Zhang & Biao Deng & Pengfei Hou & Weishu Liu, 2023. "Ultrasensitive mechanical/thermal response of a P(VDF-TrFE) sensor with a tailored network interconnection interface," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-9, December.
    7. Yu-An Xiong & Sheng-Shun Duan & Hui-Hui Hu & Jie Yao & Qiang Pan & Tai-Ting Sha & Xiao Wei & Hao-Ran Ji & Jun Wu & Yu-Meng You, 2024. "Enhancement of phase transition temperature through hydrogen bond modification in molecular ferroelectrics," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:562:y:2018:i:7725:d:10.1038_s41586-018-0550-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.