Core-double-shell structured BT@TiO2@PDA and oriented BNNSs doped epoxy nanocomposites with field-dependent nonlinear electrical properties and enhancing breakdown strength

Field-grading polymer nanocomposites have drawn significant attention in high voltage electrical industries due to their excellent nonlinear conductive or dielectric properties. But composites with both nonlinear properties are rarely reported, and desirable nonlinear performance associated with excess fillers in the composite is at the expense of electric breakdown strength. In this work, BaTiO3 nanoparticles were decorated successively using double-shell layers of TiO2 and polydopamine, which are developed as novel nanofillers ([email protected]2@PDA) for field-grading applications. Subsequently, BNNSs were prepared by liquid phase exfoliation, serving as the inhibitor of breakdown phase growth in the composites. Finally, novel epoxy nanocomposites (EP/[email protected]2@PDA-OB) with [email protected]2@PDA and oriented BNNSs were fabricated by a simple hot-pressing method. Results show that the hierarchically designed nanoparticles can make the composites possess not only nonlinear dielectric properties due to high εr of BT and improved interfacial polarization, but also nonlinear conductive properties resulted from the organic semiconductor PDA shell. Nonlinear effective medium theory (EMT) was utilized to explain the nonlinear dielectric properties, and the hopping transport model considering Pool-Frenkel effect was applied to explain the nonlinear conductive properties. In addition, electric breakdown tests reveal that EP/[email protected]2@PDA-OB has significantly enhanced breakdown strength (45.7 kV/mm) as compared to that of pristine epoxy resin (29.4 kV/mm) and EP/[email protected]2@PDA-RB (randomly dispersed BNNSs, 36.2 kV/mm). It is expected that these results can open new avenues for the design of novel composites with both nonlinear conductive properties and dielectric properties as well as high breakdown strength.