Water adsorption on and desorption from crystalline copolymers of vinylidene fluoride with trifluoroethylene

Nanoscale fabrication of the ferroelectric polymer poly(vinylidene fluoride with trifluoroethylene) P(VDF-TrFE) 75:25 thin films by atomic force microscope nanolithography

Thin films of an organic ferroelectric system, poly(vinylidene fluoride with trifluoroethylene) P(VDF-TrFE, Kureha Corporation, Tokyo, Japan) 75:25 layers, have been deposited on highly ordered pyrolytic graphite and silicon dioxide by the horizontal Schaefer method of Langmuir-Blodgett techniques. It is possible to "shave" or mechanically displace small regions of the polymer film by using atomic force microscope nanolithography techniques such as nanoshaving, leaving swaths of the surface cut to a depth of 4 nm and 12 nm exposing the substrate. The results of fabricating stripes by nanoshaving two holes close to each other show a limit to the material "stripe" widths of an average of 153.29 nm and 177.67 nm that can be produced. Due to the lack of adhesion between the substrates and the polymer P(VDF-TrFE) film, smaller "stripes" of P(VDF-TrFE) cannot be produced, and it can be shown by the sequencing of nanoshaved regions that "stripes" of thin films can be removed.

Water Interactions with Crystalline Polymers with Large Dipoles

We compare the interactions of water with the ferroelectric copolymer poly(vinylidene fluoride (PVDF) – trifluoroethylene (TrFE)) and poly(methylvinylidenecyanide) (PMCV), a strongly dipole ordered polymer. At the microscopic scale, dipole interactions matter and affect the surface chemistry at these polymer surfaces, as does lattice strain caused by water absorption. Light polarization dependent photo-assisted thermal desorption helps demonstrate that water desorption from surface and bulk can be influenced by the formation of electronic metastable states. Changes in local dipole orientation and the formation of long lived metastable states affect the strength of the coupling between the dipoles of water molecules and the dipoles of the copolymer poly(vinylidene fluoride – trifluoroethylene) but these effects were not observed for poly(methylvinylidenecyanide).

H/D Isotopic Exchange in Water Interactions with the Ferroelectric Copolymer: Poly(vinylidene fluoride−trifluoroethylene) (70%:30%)

For both water and heavy water adsorption and absorption on crystalline poly(vinylidene fluoride with trifluoroethylene (30%)), P(VDF-TrFE 70:30), two distinctly different adsorption sites have been identified by thermal desorption spectroscopy. One adsorbed water species resembles ice and there is also an absorbed water species that interacts more strongly with the polymer thin film, and in addition, there is a polymer surface (polymer to ice interface) water species. We find that there is H/D exchange between the water or heavy water molecules and the ferroelectric polymer (largely -(CH2-CF2)-), particularly at the polymer surface.