Abstract
In this paper, titanium dioxide was selected as a model to show the effect of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) on dispersion improvement of metal oxide nanoparticles, TiO2 and to understand the relationship between the structure and the final dielectric properties of LDPE/TiO2 nanocomposites. A microscopic observation by AFM showed that the TiO2 nanoparticle treated with the POSS were better dispersed in the polymer matrix as compared to untreated TiO2. Furthermore, it was observed that the modification of the surface of TiO2 by the POSS decreased the dielectric loss without changing the dielectric breakdown of LDPE/TiO2 nanocomposites. The improved dielectric properties could be related to the good dispersion of the nanoparticles.