Effect of Zinc Oxide Nanofiller on the Dielectric Thermal and Optical Properties of Polypropylene

In the field of electrical engineering, polymer nano-composites have been alluring owing to their excellent dielectric properties. At contrasting loading concentration, they are embodied with nano-fillers for boosting their dielectric properties. This paper aims to investigate the dielectric properties, thermal properties, surface hydrophobicity, surface leakage current and optical properties of polypropylene (PP) when reinforced with Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nano-fillers to find its suitability as a dielectric material. With the introduction of ZnO fillers in PP, improvements of dielectric properties have been observed. Thermal stability is observed to be more or less the same in terms of decomposition temperature, temperature corresponding to maximum rate of decomposition, endothermic and exothermic peak. Better surface hydrophobicity and leakage current of lower magnitude are observed even with ZnO filler loading. UV absorption has been found to have increased after ZnO nano-filler loading.