Study on dielectric behavior of Lithium Tantalate(LT) nano particle filled poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) nano composite

For pyroelectric detector application materials should have low dielectric constant, high pyroelectric coefficient, large non volatile polarization at small applied electric field and low specific heat. Large field (greater than 1200kV/cm) is need to pole ferroelectric polymer poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and it has low sensitivity compared to other pyroelectric materials. To increase non volatile polarization at low poling field and to increase pyroelectric coefficient, LiTaO3 (LT) nano particles were added to PVDF matrix to make LT/PVDF composite. It is important to study the dielectric properties of the composite (to be used in detector application) because dielectric constant varies with volume fraction of filler and with frequency. Nano composite films of LT/PVDF with different volume fraction (i. e fLT = 0.047, 0.09 and 0.17) of LT were prepared by dispersing LT nano particles in solution of PVDF. The dielectric properties of LT/PVDF composite were studied by varying the volume fraction of LT. The dielectric permittivity of LT/ PVDF composites increased compared to PVDF as the volume fraction of LT increases but the loss tangent is almost constant at higher frequency. In low frequency region, for fLT = 0.17 the dielectric permittivity of composite is greater than PVDF and LT. The dielectric loss tangent is also increased from 0.04 to 0.175 as fLT increases from 0 to 0.17 at 1 kHz. The dielectric permittivity behavior of composite has been explained using percolation model and space charge polarization model.