(658c) Property Improvement of Polymer Dielectric Materials

Polymer dielectric materials find utility in a myriad of applications such as in capacitors, structural capacitors, electromechanical transducers, insulation layers, device packaging, and in the semiconductor industry as passivation and interlayer dielectrics.  For applications involving capacitors, energy storage density depends on both the dielectric constant and on the dielectric strength, with most research efforts toward the improvement in energy density focusing on dielectric constant manipulation.  This presentation will highlight the work in this area conducted at the US Army Research Laboratory, which has focused on investigating energy storage performance in terms of both the dielectric constant and dielectric strength of polymeric materials in the presence of various small molecule dopants.  Specifically, dielectric strength, dielectric loss, and synchrotron-based techniques XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) and NEXAFS (near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure) were used to characterize systems.  Change in performance is discussed in light of various models of breakdown behavior and molecular modeling.