Enhancement of α to β phase transformation in poly (vinylidene fluoride) nanocomposites under uni-axial stretch: Contribution from restriction of nano-particles

Lei Gong, Yiwei Hao, Hongxue Liu, Bo Xi, Yonghui Cao, Yong Cao

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Electroactive polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) with predominantly the β-phase is now challenging the fabricating of PVDF toward energy storage applications. Here, the comprehensive effect of BaTiO3 nano-particles and mechanical stretching on the improvement of the β-phase of PVDF was investigated. In situ synchrotron wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) measurements were performed to investigate this behavior. Consequently, the transformation rate of β-crystal for both pure PVDF (BT0) and PVDF/BaTiO3 (90/10) nanocomposites (BT1) decreases as the stretching temperature increases, implying that the high temperature is unfavorable to the formation of β-crystal phase. A synergistic enhancement of the β-phase of nano-particle additives and stretching was discovered. It was surprisingly observed that α-phase of PVDF would completely transform into β-crystal in BT1 sample at 100 °C during stretching. The mechanism of the synergistic effect of BaTiO3 nano-particles and mechanical stretching was proposed. Moreover, machine learning was implemented to predict the fraction of β-crystal phase (F(β)) of the PVDF/BaTiO3 composites under various uni-axial stretching conditions by Python 3.8. The results show that the machine learning technique can rapidly and efficiently discover the ideal value of F(β) and the optimal multivariate coupling conditions.

Original languageEnglish
Article number108516
JournalPolymer Testing
Volume138
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2024

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