Polymer nanocomposites based on flexible BaTiO3 networks anchored with gold nanoparticles towards simultaneous high dielectric permittivity and low loss

Polymer composites filled with conductive fillers have been proven to have ultra-high effective permittivity near percolation, but they usually have high dielectric loss due to the easy contact between the conductive fillers. Herein, a polymer composite with a three-dimensional BaTiO 3 ceramic skeleton loaded with gold nanoparticles, which effectively avoids the direct contact of gold nanoparticles, is proposed. Benefiting from numerous equivalent micro-capacitors and the Coulomb blockade effect of gold nanoparticles, obviously enhanced permittivity and low loss are concurrently achieved. Particularly, with a gold sputtering time of 12 min, a high permittivity of 47.7@10 kHz, which is approximately 454 % (i.e. from 8.2 to 47.7@10 kHz) of the PVDF matrix, is achieved in the composite. Meanwhile, a low loss of about 0.032, which is merely about 65 % that of pure PVDF ( 0.0492@10 kHz) is maintained. This work provides an effective approach for designing polymer composites with high permittivity and low loss.