Dielectric capacitors for energy storage are of great importance in modern electronics and electric systems. It is a challenge to realize the high energy density while maintain the low dielectric loss. We investigated an ultra high breakdown electric field of 1.1 GV/m, which is approaching the intrinsic breakdown, in aromatic polythiourea, a new dielectric material that serves a high energy density of 23 J/cm3 as well as high charge-discharge efficiency above 90%. The molecular structure and film surface morphology were also studied, it was proved a polar amorphous phase and glass state material could significantly suppress the high field conduction to several orders smaller compared with regular polymer dielectric materials, which are usually semi-crystalline and in rubber phase.

The poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)) based ferroelectric and relaxor materials have been proved to be good electrocaloric (EC) materials. To further enhance the EC effect in ferroelectric relaxor terpolymer poly(vinylidene fluoride–trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE-CFE)), composites such as polymer-polymer blends and nanocomposites filled with inorganic nanoparticles are fabricated and investigated. It is found that the addition of small amount of filler (such as P(VDF-TrFE) or nano-ZrO2) can increase terpolymer’s crystallinity and enhance its relaxor behavior through interface couplings. The increased crystallinity and enhanced relaxor behavior together result in enhanced electrocaloric effect. The results demonstrate the promise of composite approaches in tailoring and enhancing ECE in the relaxor terpolymers.

Dielectric polymers with high energy density with low loss at high electric fields are highly desired for many energy storage and regulation applications. A polar-fluoropolymer blend consisting of a high energy density polar-fluoropolymer of poly(vinylidene fluoride-chlorotrifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-CTFE)) with a low dielectric loss polymer of poly(ethylene-chlorotrifluoroethylene) (ECTFE) was developed and investigated. We show that the two polymers are partially miscible which leads to blends with high energy density and low loss. Moreover, by introducing crosslinking to further tailor the nano-structures of the blends a markedly reduction of losses in the blend films at high field can be achieved. The crosslinked blend films show a dielectric constant of 7 with a dielectric loss of 1% at low field. Furthermore, the blends maintain a high energy density and low loss (∼3%) at high electric fields (> 250 MV/m).

Besides energy density, the electric loss at high electric fields is another major concern for many capacitor applications. This paper presents recent works in developing high energy density low loss polymer capacitors. In order to reduce the dielectric loss while maintaining high energy density in poly(vinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene) P(VDF-HFP) and P(VDF-CTFE) (CTFE: Chlorotrifluoroethylene) based polymers, a polymer blend approach was investigated. We show that by blending P(VDF-CTFE) with a proper low loss polymer such as poly(ethylene- chlorotrifluoroethylene) (ECTFE) can lead to marked improvement in the loss of dielectric films. In this study, P(VDF-CTFE) blends films with different wt% of ECTFE have been examined to find a balance between dielectric constant and the loss. In addition, crosslink in the blends has been employed to further improve the dielectric performance of the blends. The results indicate that these blends exhibit an excellent performance: relatively high dielectric constant (~ 6~7) and low loss (~ 0.01) at 1 kHz. For the crosslink blend films, the high field loss is reduced to below 5% with a discharged energy density 4.3 J/cm3 under a field of 300 MV/m.

Poly(vinylidene fluoride trifluoroethylene chlorofluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE-CFE)) terpolymer nanorods embedded in Anodic Alumina Oxide( AAO) templates with pore sizes of 25, 70, and 200nm diameter were fabricated by extending the time of the wetting process. The instability of the wetting process induced the terpolymer infiltration into the inner space of tepolymer nanotubes, which formed mostly filled terpolymer nanorods. It was observed that all these nanorods embedded in AAO templates still possess relaxor ferroelectric behavior. The broad dielectric peak shifts progressively to higher temperatures with increasing frequency and the frequency- permittivity peak temperature fits well with the Vogel-Fulcher (V-F) relation. Moreover, the freezing temperature of the V-F relation is reduced, with the reduction of nanorod diameter. This indicates that the lateral confinement of the nanorods influences the relaxor ferroelectric behavior of the relaxor ferroelectric P(VDF-TrFE-CFE) terpolymer.

We investigate aromatic polyureas which can be fabricated in the form of thin films through CVD. It was found that the polymer possesses a flat dielectric response (k∼ 4.2 and loss <1%)) to more than 200°C. The frequency-independent dielectric properties in the investigated frequency range(1kHz∼1MHz), low conductance, low dissipation factor (∼0.005), high breakdown strength (>800MV/m), high energy density (>12J/cm3) and high efficiency suggest this polymer can be a good candidate material for high temperature energy storage capacitors. Breakdown strength was analyzed with Weibull model over a broad temperature range (25°C ∼180°C). Experimental results indicate that aromatic polyurea is more like a nonpolar linear dielectric material because of its highly cross-linked structures. The experiment results further show that this polymer maintains its high performance even at high temperatures.

Very large electro-optic effect has been observed in relaxor ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) ( P(VDF-TrFE-CFE) ) terpolymer. By adding small amount of zinc sulfide (ZnS) nanoparticles, the refractive index of the nanocomposites can be tuned between about 1.4 and 1.5 while retaining large electro-optic effect and high transparency. Tunable long-period fiber gratings have been fabricated with the nanocomposite as the second cladding, and over 50nm of resonant wavelength shift has been achieved under a change of electric field of 30V/μm, which is much larger than other reported E-O tuning ranges. This corresponds to a pure refractive index change of the nanocomposite of Δn/n ∼ 0.4%.