Development of a fabrication process for a piezoelectric energy harvesting film using a reel-to-reel continuous fiber process

This paper reports a novel fabrication process of an all polymer piezoelectric film which consists of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film substrate, conductive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) electrodes, and ferroelectric polymer poly(vinylidenefluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE) using reel-to-reel continuous fiber processing systems. Existing piezoelectric films have been deposited on rigid silicon or inorganic materials which lead to high resonance frequency and low efficiency of energy generating under low frequency of human or animal motions. Therefore, we developed all polymeric piezoelectric films on very soft PET films. To deposit P(VDF-TrFE) film on PEDOT:PSS coated PET, low temperature coating process using low boiling temperature solvent (acetone) and annealing method (under 150 °C) was developed.