Design and Synthesis of Polymer Nanocomposites for Radio Frequency Applications

摘要

Radio frequency (RF) polymer nanocomposites offer many interesting materialsoptions by combining electric and magnetic materials with structural and processingproperties of polymers. For applications in microelectronics and microwavecommunication systems, ideal material properties would be high permeability andhigh permittivity, while maintaining low loss. For this study, nanocomposites werecured using diglycidyl ether of bisphenol F (DGEBF) with 4,4' diamino diphenylsulfone (DDS) as the curing agent. Nanoparticles used for this study include ironoxide (Fe3O4) nanopowder of spherical morphology. To optimize the nanoparticledispersion within the matrix, an ultrasonication technique was used for synthesis ofthe composites with varying weight percent of the inclusions. The dielectricproperties of the nancomposites were measured using a material/impedanceanalyzer which measures permeability and permittivity with changing frequency.Initial results show that the iron oxide nancomposites are relatively lossless(properties remain constant with frequency) and have a relative permittivity near 6and permeability near 2. The composites were found to cure faster with higherloadings of nanopowder, as seen using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).The cure initiation temperature increased with particle loading, indicating that thevery small particles delayed cure. Future research will focus on measuring themechanical properties of the composites to see if the material can maintain goodproperties while still having high concentrations of iron oxide filler. Moreover, amore detailed look at the effects on cure characteristics will be carried out. Also,different processing techniques will be used – I.e. microwave processing,compression molding, etc.