Studies of dielectric and switching characteristics in VDF/TrFE copolymer thin films by means of pulse-train measurements

Ferroelectric switching processes in a copolymer of vinylidene fluoride and trifluoroethylene were studied by means of pulse-train measurements which used an application of a train of short electric field pulses and detection of the charge response. It is shown that polarization reversal is considerably slowed down, but is completed eventually even if the pulse width is reduced to 1/100 of the conventional switching time. Removing the dielectric contribution from the observed charge response extracts the time evolution of intrinsic ferroelectric component which clearly demonstrates the transition from the nucleation process to the growth process during polarization reversal.