Optical properties and dielectric relaxation of polyvinylidene fluoride thin films doped with gadolinium chloride

In this study, the properties of pure and GdCl3-doped polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) films were investigated. X-ray diffraction revealed that the PVDF was composed of mixed alpha and beta phases. Adding GdCl3 to PVDF decreased the crystallinity of the polymer matrix. At room temperature, in the ultraviolet-visible range both the absorbance (a) and extinction coefficient (k) of PVDF decreased with GdCl3 content, demonstrating that the optical response of the doped films improved because of increasing optical energy gap (E-g). We also measured the dielectric loss (epsilon ''), electric modulus (M ''), and ac conductivity (sigma(ac)) at 300-450 K and 0.1-3000 kHz. The pure and doped PVDF exhibited different relaxation processes. The activation energy (E-a) of the alpha(c) relaxation decreased with increasing GdCl3 content, following an Arrhenius relationship. The behavior of the ac conductivity revealed that the conduction mechanism for studied films followed correlated barrier hopping model. The hopping distance (R) was calculated at different temperatures for all investigated samples. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.