Designing Micro Bulge Structure with Uniform PS Microspheres for Boosted Dielectric Hydrophobic Blend Films

In this paper, homogeneous polystyrene (PS) microspheres with controllable sizes of 40 nm, 80 nm, and 120 nm were synthesized by controlling the temperature of solvothermal method. In order to explore the effect of PS microspheres on dielectric-hydrophobic properties of the composite films, the composite films containing polystyrene, Polydimethylsiloxane, and P(VDF-TrFE) with high dielectric and hydrophobicity were successfully prepared by a simple and feasible solution blending method. The dielectric constant and hydrophobicity of composite films were boosted by increasing the mass fraction of PS content and decreasing the size of PS due to the enhanced interfacial polarization and the uniform surface micro bulge structure. Meanwhile, the composite films maintain a low loss tangent. Typically, the dielectric constant with 5 wt.% 40 nm PS reached to 29 at 100Hz, which is 4 times that of PDMS/P(VDF-TrFE) (mass ratio: 2/3). Otherwise, the largest the contact angle of 126° in the same composition was remarkably larger than the pure PDMS/P(VDF-TrFE) (110°). These improved properties have more potential applications in the electric wetting devices.