Flexible and Transparent Flexoelectric Microphone

Abstract PVDF based flexoelectric polymers imply innumerous applications, for example, in developing flexible and transparent transducers for touch screen users. Here, a prototype flexoelectric microphone is developed and characterized. A straightforward method is adopted to fabricate the microphone device in which a film of copolymer blend is sandwiched between pair of ITO coated transparent electrodes integrated at the stretched rubber substrates. In this study, the phase represented at 1337 cm⁻¹ of FTIR reflection spectra containing 50% α and 50% ß termed as Zeta phase which is correlated to the enhancement in its flexoelectric properties, is investigated. Here, the flexoelectric coefficient (µ₃₃) and sensitivity (S) of 6.5 cm × 5 cm flexible and transparent laminates featuring 0 ≤ φ ≤ 1.0 blends at 100SPL is examined. The study reports the µ₃₃ = 23.5 µC m⁻¹ and S = 15.3 V Pa⁻¹ for φ = 0.5 blend, which is the highest reported values for P (VDF‐TrFE) and P (VDF‐TrFE‐CTFE) polymer blends. This study is helpful in developing the flexible and transparent flexoelectric microphones for potential mobile applications.