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Abstract
Ferroelectric properties of polyvinylidene fluoride PVDF, its copolymers with trifluoroethylene P(VDF/TrFE), and barium titanate BaTiO 3 have been simulated. The systems consist of field-induced dipoles and permanent dipoles/ions. The iterative algorithm is based on deterministic local field calculations and on weighted probabilistic Monte Carlo steps. For PVDF we find that the hysteresis depends on temperature and thickness. The coercive field decreases with increasing thickness. Simulations of the switching behaviour showed that PVDF exhibits non-exponential polarisation relaxations. With increasing external field the switching becomes faster. Snapshots of the system at different times further revealed a pronounced pinning effect for the dipoles next to the conducting electrodes. Preliminary simulations for BaTiO 3 also revealed the typical ferroelectric hysteresis.
Acknowledgment
We thank the John von Neumann Institute for Computing (NIC), Federal Research Centre Juelich, Germany, for the grant to use the JUMP supercomputer.