On the effectiveness of vibrational spectroscopy to study piezoelectric polymers

In order to investigate the effectiveness of vibrational spectroscopy in the characterization of polymer piezoelectric materials, poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) samples are carefully studied. The characterizations are performed by using different Fourier transform infrared sampling techniques, i.e. transmission (FTIR), attenuated total reflectance (FTIR-ATR) and photoacoustic spectroscopy (FTIR-PAS). The attenuated total reflectance (ATR) and photoacoustic (PAS) sampling methods allow us to study the IR spectra for thick piezoelectric samples. To the best of our knowledge, it has been determined for the first time the relative fractions of the & beta; phase, F(& beta;), in PVDF by FTIR-PAS.