Ricerc@Sapienza

The piezoelectric properties of PVDF mainly depend on its β-phase. In this work, we investigated through Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM) the piezoelectric properties of PVDF composite films when we induce the formation of β-phase crystals adding a nanofiller, like graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) or zinc-oxide nanorods (ZnO-NRs), but without applying any electrical poling. At first, we fabricated piezoelectric PVDF nanocomposite films by the solution casting method.

The feasibility of Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)-graphene nanocomposite coatings for radar absorption is investigated. To this purpose, a production process of PVDF coatings filled with graphene nanoplatelets has been developed. All the produced samples were characterized in terms of morphological, electrical and electromagnetic properties. The effective complex dielectric permittivity was measured in Ku-band and the results were used to predict by simulations the reflection coefficient of radar absorbing panels consisting of PVDF-graphene coatings over dielectric substrates.