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Electrical Poling

Electrical poling is a process to align the dipole to create polarization by applying an external electric field. 

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There are two types of electrical poling, contact poling and corona poling.

Contact poling is performed by placing the piezoelectric material (i.e., films) between two electrodes with both sides having close contact to the film surface. The advantage of this method is that the poling field is well controlled. The drawback of this method is that the poling field is often limited by the breakdown strength of the film and the setup of the electrodes. This could be an issue especially when poling with large film area. Often, surface deposited or printed electrodes are provided to reach a high poling field.

Corona poling is achieved by exposing the piezoelectric film in a corona discharge environment with one side back to the ground electrode. Ions  or electrons, depending on the polarity of the corona discharge voltage, are deposited on the film surface to form the poling field. This method does require electrode preparation and is amenable to film imperfections, thus can pole large area. The disadvantage is that the poling field is often not known. The result of corona poling is often checked by follow-up characterizations.