Introducing Photo-Cross-Linkable Functionalities on P(VDF-co-TrFE) Ferroelectric Copolymer

Ferroelectric polymers have emerged as crucial materials for the development of advanced organic electronic devices. Their recent high-end commercial applications as fingerprint sensors have only increased the amount of scientific interest around them. Despite an ever-larger body of studies focusing on optimizing the properties of ferroelectric polymers by physical means (e. g., annealing, stretching, blending or nano-structuring), post-polymerization chemical modification of such polymers has only recently become a field of active study with great promise in expanding the scope of those polymers. In this work, a solution-based post-polymerization modification method was developed for the safe and facile grafting of a plethora of functional groups to the backbone of commercially available Poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene P(VDF-co-TrFE) ferroelectric polymers. To showcase the versatility of this approach, photosensitive groups were grafted onto the polymeric backbone, enabling them to undergo photo-cross-linking. Finally, these modified polymers were used as functional negative photoresists in a photolithographic process, highlighting the potential of this method to integrate ferroelectric fluorinated electroactive polymers into standard electronic microfabrication production lines.