Octahedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (OAPS and OG) - Polyimide hybrid nanocomposite films: Thermo-mechanical, dielectric and morphology properties

Abstract

The nano-sized SQS based polyimides have been successfully synthesized with different oxide groups such as phosphineoxide, sulfone and siloxane as in the backbone of polymer. The SQS-Polyimide nanocomposites prepared through the condensation process using amine and epoxy functionalized SQS as precursor. The presence of SQS in the resulting polyimide nanocomposites was confirmed by FTIR and XRD analyses. The presence of SQS and greatly enhances the char yield to an extent of 16% when compared to that of neat polyimide. The incorporation of SQS into polyimide lowered the value of dielectric constant from 3.31 to 2.09 at 1 MHz and the value of thermal expansion coefficient from 56.6 to 42.7 ppm/K. The composites sample prepared using 20 wt% SQS possess the lowest value of dielectric constant and CTE value. The hydrophobic nature of SQS contributes to lower the water uptake of composites from a value of 2.76 (neat polyimide) to 2.42 for POS-PI containing 20 wt% SQS. Further, the SQS polyimide composite systems possess the enhanced values of thermal stability and glass transition temperatures according their percentage weight. Data obtained from different studies, it is suggested that these hybrid composites can be used as an effective insulation materials for high performance microelectronics applications.