Influence of conductive and dielectric fillers on the relaxation of solid silicone rubber composites

Flexible dielectrics possessing high permittivity and low loss are desirable for many electromechanical transduction applications. Solid silicone rubber composites are promising materials for electromechanical applications. These composites are fabricated using high-temperature vulcanization process, with various amounts of conductive, dielectric and conductor-dielectric filler and processing parameters. Dielectric and conductivity relaxations of these composites are investigated using dielectric spectroscopy in the 20 Hz-2 MHz frequency range at room temperature. Dielectric relaxations of dielectric filler composites show different behaviour compared to conductive and conductive-dielectric filler composites even with the same filler loading. All composites show increased permittivity at lower frequencies. The maximum permittivity of 46, 5.8 and 46 at 20 Hz was attained for the conductive, dielectric and conductive-dielectric composites respectively at similar filler loadings. The composites follow the AC universality law with exponents in the range of 0.82 to 1.02. The conductive filler is more reinforcing than dielectric filler as seen from the variation of Young's modulus with filler type. Uniform dispersion of fillers is observed for all the three composites.