In-situ preparation of hierarchical flower-like TiO(2)/carbon nanostructures as fillers for polymer composites with enhanced dielectric properties

Novel three-dimensional hierarchical flower-like TiO(2)/carbon (TiO(2)/C) nanostructures were in-situ synthesized via a solvothermal method involving calcination of organic precursor under inert atmosphere. The composite films comprised of P (VDF-HFP) and as-prepared hierarchical flower-like TiO(2)/C were fabricated by a solution casting and hot-pressing approach. The results reveal that loading the fillers with a small amount of carbon is an effective way to improve the dielectric constant and suppress the dielectric loss. In addition, TiO(2)/C particles with higher carbon contents exhibit superiority in promoting the dielectric constants of composites when compared with their noncarbon counterparts. For instance, the highest dielectric constant (330.6) of the TiO(2)/C composites is 10 times over that of noncarbon-TiO(2)-filled ones at the same filler volume fraction, and 32 times over that of pristine P (VDF-HFP). The enhancement in the dielectric constant can be attributed to the formation of a large network, which is composed of local micro-capacitors with carbon particles as electrodes and TiO(2) as the dielectric in between.