Preparation and Device Applications of Ferroelectric β-PVDF Films

Organic ferroelectric materials have unique characters comparing to their inorganic counterparts in electronics because they show the advantages such as low cost, lightweight, small thermal budget, flexible and nontoxic characteristics. The ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) is mostly desired for memory devices due to its polar phase. To obtain the ferroelectric memory devices for data storage, ultrathin PVDF films are required to allow for low operation voltages with both small roughness and free of pin-holes. Micron-meter thick films of ferroelectric phase PVDF can be easily achieved by many preparation methods. But the nanofilms could be mainly fabricated by coating method and Langmuir–Blodgett deposition technique. Meanwhile, according to the structure of devices, four types of organic memory cells using ferroelectric phase PVDF films were introduced, such as memory based on metal/organic semiconductor/metal ferroelectric tunnel junctions, organic capacitors, field effect transistor and organic diodes. The research has been mainly done in Zhang’s laboratory from September 2016 to explore the preparation and potential applications of ferroelectric PVDF films. In this chapter, we summarize several device investigations and show the PVDF films have the promising memory applications.