Modeling of hysteretic behavior in ferroelectric polymers

Controlling the polarization state of ferroelectric materials, and more particularly piezoelectric polymers, is critical to ensure good operation of actuators or sensors using such energy conversion mechanisms. More specifically, the modeling and prediction of the hysteretic behavior of such materials is a critical aspect for the fabrication of robust and accurate devices. The purpose of this article is to present a model based on mathematical functions describing hysteretic behavior as a sum of elementary polarizations arising from combined avalanche and saturation physical effects. Predicted responses show good agreement with experimental measurements, and extension of the model for taking into account electric field-induced crystallization during operations is presented. Finally, the proposed model is simple to implement and does no require heavy computational and memory requirements, as it relies on pure mathematical functions and only requires unidimensional distribution of elementary polarizations.