LAUSR

The electrical properties of polyimide and the composite at different volumes fractions were studied in the frequency range 200 Hz–20 kHz and in the temperature range 30–200 °C. Increasing the volume fraction of graphene up to 10%, resulted in an extremely large increase in the dielectric constant, which indicates the composites remarkable ability to store electric potential energy under the effect of alternating electric field. An increase in dielectric constant was also observed with increasing temperature and decreasing frequency. The outstanding dielectric properties of polyimide graphene nanocomposites are attributed to the large volume fraction of interfaces in the bulk of the material. The measured increase in dielectric constant with increasing temperature was attributed to the segmental mobility of the polymer chains. The AC conductivity for polyimide and the composites was calculated from the loss factor and a remarkably high conductivity was obtained for the composites due to the formation of conducting paths in the matrix by the graphene sheets. Also this study showed that the thermal conductivity of the composites increased sharply with increasing graphene concentration. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 134, 45372.