Improvement of adhesion characteristics of copper electrodes on polyvinylidene fluoride films using bovine serum albumin

Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is one of the widely used piezoelectric polymers and has been used in flexible sensors, energy harvesting, wearable devices, and so on. However, the low adhesion characteristics of PVDF limits its application because of the fluorine components. To improve the adhesion characteristics of PVDF, we proposed a novel method to fabricate the electrodes on PVDF films using bovine serum albumin (BSA). To optimize the fabrication process, we manufactured the copper electrodes on PVDF films according to the concentrations of the BSA and palladium (Pd) solutions. The piezoelectric characteristics of the fabricated PVDF films and the adhesion strength between the electrodes and PVDF films were measured using a d33 m and scratch tester, respectively. The adhesion strength and piezoelectric characteristics of the PVDF films fabricated using the proposed method increased compared with those of conventional PVDF films. In addition, we found that the best combination of BSA and Pd concentration were 0.5 and 0.6 mg/mL, respectively.