A comparative study of integrated ferroelectric polymer pyroelectric sensors

This paper presents a comparative study of integrated pyroelectric sensors based on ferroelectric polymers. Two deposition technologies of PVDF and VDF/TrFE copolymer, both compatible with IC manufacturing, are presented. A 9 μm PVDF film is bonded on a silicon substrate using a capacitive acrylic thin film and a i μm VDF/TrFE copolymer is coated directly using a spin-coating technique. The theoretical response of both PVDF and VDF/TrFE pyroelectric sensors are calculated and related to the measured values. Peak responsivities of 4.5 V/W at 200 Hz and 3 V/W at 1kHz have been achieved for the pyroelectric sensors based on PVDF AND VDF/TrFE copolymer, respectively. Despite the responsivity of PVDF being slightly higher than that of the VDF/TrFE copolymer, the choice of which polymer to use will depend on the application and the preferred processing route.