Manifestation of a Ferroelectric Phase Transition

Temperature dependences of the dielectric properties of ultrathin polyvinylidene fluoride films prepared using the Langmuir–Blodgett method were studied by linear and nonlinear dielectric spectroscopy. It is shown that ultrathin Langmuir films of polyvinylidene fluoride exhibit a manifestation of a first-order ferroelectric phase transition, which can be assigned to the interaction between the spontaneous polarization and the surfaces bounding the film. As the film thickness increases, the effect of the surfaces decreases and the ferroelectric phase transition shifts to high temperatures to vanish altogether when the temperature region of the transition rises above the melting point. © 2005 Pleiades Publishing, Inc.