Measuring the Permittivity of Ferroelectric Nanoparticles in an Epoxy Composite

Sandia National Laboratories Engineering/Physics, 2016-17

Liaison(s): Todd Monson
Advisor(s): Richard Haskell, Albert Dato
Students(s): Marisol Beck (TL-S), Carmel Zhao (TL-F), Jonas Kaufman, Cesar Orellana, Robin Bendiak (F), Isabel Martos-Repath (S)

Barium titanate (BTO) is a ferroelectric material commonly used in capacitors because of its high bulk dielectric constant, which may be even higher in nanoparticle form. The Sandia team is determining the dielectric constant of BTO nanoparticles as a function of particle size by measuring composites of BTO nanoparticles in epoxy. We are improving our composite fabrication procedure to reduce the agglomeration of BTO nanoparticles and using finite element analysis to extract the dielectric constant of the nanoparticles.