The Development of an All-polymer-based Piezoelectric Photocurable Resin for Additive Manufacturing

In this work, we report the development of an all-polymer-based piezoelectric photocurable resin (V-Ink) suitable for additive manufacturing processes based on light-controlled polymerization techniques. By taking into account the trade off between the manufacturability and piezoelectric characteristics, the optimized V-Ink contains 35 wt.% of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) particles being suspended in the photocurable resin. We have successfully demonstrated a 3D printed piezoelectrically-active thick film with an optimized piezoelectric voltage coefficient (g33) of 105.12 × 10-3 V·m/N. We envision this new materials will bring promising opportunities for additive manufacturing of flexible functional devices, especially for novel applications in biosensing and detection.