Surface modification of boron nitride by reduced graphene oxide for preparation of dielectric material with enhanced dielectric constant and well-suppressed dielectric loss

Abstract Adding conductive filler is an effective way to enhance the dielectric constant while usually also increases the dielectric loss of polymer. In this study, we demonstrated that polymer composites with much improved dielectric constant while maintaining ultra-low dielectric loss could be achieved via using hybrid filler and controlling the dispersion of conductive filler in polymer matrix. To do this, the graphene oxide was designed to be immobilized on the surface of large-sized insulating hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) via electrostatic self-assembly, and afterwards introducing this hybrid filler into epoxy accompanied with chemical reduction. In this case, since the reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheets were fixed on the surface of h-BN, rGO sheets were well separated from each other even at high loading. Hence not only significantly enhanced dielectric constant was observed, but also a very low dielectric loss comparable to that of neat epoxy was achieved. This low dielectric loss was believed to be ascribed to both embedded insulating network of h-BN to inhibit the mobility of charge carrier and well-separated rGO sheets via immobilization. In addition to obviously improved dielectric properties, the nanocomposites also exhibited good thermal conductivity. We believe that this special structure will provide a new thought for fabricating dielectric materials with much enhanced dielectric constant as well as well-suppressed dielectric loss.