Polyvinylidene fluoride, an advanced futuristic smart polymer material: A comprehensive review

Abstract There was a fast development of various piezoelectric materials in the past two decades due to their numerous applications. Piezoelectric materials made up of natural quartz crystals were used in ultrasonic detectors in the early days. Later, the modern synthetic piezoelectric materials known as ferroelectric ceramics, such as Lead zirconate titanate (PZT), were developed, which were capable of exhibiting piezoelectricity several times greater than natural crystals. Later, the declination of ceramics began as they contained large amounts of lead content, which was considered harmful to both humans and the environment. Finally, a new era in the history of piezoelectric materials boomed with the outbreak of polymer materials. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is a piezoelectric polymer material that has drawn the attention of researchers, from the family of fluoropolymers and has paved a new path in the field of polymer science and technology. PVDF has earned the renown of being an excellent piezoelectric material due to its unique and versatile exhibition of piezoelectric and dielectric properties. Furthermore, PVDF can exhibit incredible thermal stability and mechanical strength with flexible processing and low cost compared with the other piezoelectric crystals and ceramics. This comprehensive review mainly focuses on the evolution of piezoelectric materials from crystals to polymers with their advantages and significant drawbacks. Thus, the main objective of this review is to present a detailed description of PVDF concerning its uniqueness as a piezoelectric material and versatile properties, followed by various advanced fabrication techniques and their impact on doping various nanofillers with respective applications. Though PVDF is renowned for its significant applications such as sensors, actuators, energy harvesting and biomedical devices, a tabular chart has been specially framed in one‐liners which highlights the real‐time experimental outcomes where PVDF can be specified as a futuristic polymer for multifunctional applications. A few reports resulted that with increasing graphite and MWCNT fillers into PVDF film, the EMI shielding effectiveness value rose to 14.64 dB at a frequency of 8‐12 Hz. A few reports resulted that by adding ZnO and BaTiO 3 , the electrical output increased significantly, which is more suitable as a nanogenerator. After an extensive literature survey, we found that reviews are very limited and restricted to specific applications and properties. This review is an overall brief explanation of enormous research works carried out by various experts and presented in a modest way with pictorial and tabular representation for the convenience of researchers. Finally, this review attempts to provide source material to direct researchers towards a fertile area of research with a better understanding of the fundamentals and advancement of polymer piezoelectric materials.