Studies on Reinforced Polymer Nanocomposites with Graphene Quantum Dots and Metal Oxide for Energy Storage applications

Abstract

The development of various new energy generation technologies is driven by global air pollution, climate change, and energy deficiencies. As a result there is a high demand for dielectric materials with a high energy-storage capability and low loss. These mate-rials are crucial for the rapid advancement of power electronics devices and their poten-tial use in the energy storage capacitor. Both academia and industry researchers have been encouraged to develop new dielectric materials that exhibit excellent dielectric properties, mechanical properties, thermal stability, and high energy density, depend-ing on the desired applications. This increasing demand for processable, lightweight,and flexible energy storage materials has led to a hot research topic: the utilization of newlinepolymer nanocomposites reinforced with nanomaterials as dielectric materials in the newlinefabrication of energy conversion, harvesting, and storage systems. This thesis aims to newlinereport the fabrication and characterization of flexible dielectric polymer nanocomposite newline(PNC) films with varying weight percentage (wt%) of nanofillers. It provides a com- newlineprehensive overview of recent advancements in nanomaterials and PNC based dielectric newlinematerials, as well as the various factors that affect their dielectric properties as a func- newlinetion of frequency and temperature. The PNC films with different wt% were prepared newlineusing simple and cost-effective solution casting techniques. The functional groups and newlinestructural characteristics of the PNC films were analysed using Fourier transform in- newlinefrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. The surface newlinemorphology of PNC films was examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). newlineAdditionally, the weight loss and thermal stability of PNC films was investigated us- newlineing thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), while the mechanical properties were estimated newlineusing stress-strain curves. Furthermore, this thesis focuses primarily on the dielectric newlineproperties of various PNC films derived using graphene quantum