A comparative study of PMMA/PEG polymer nanocomposites doped with different oxides nanoparticles for potential optoelectronic applications

PMMA/PEG and PMMA/PEG doped with SiO₂, TiO_2, and Al₂O₃ were fabricated using the solution-casting technique. The composites were characterized by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), which revealed that the amorphous nature of PMMA/PEG blend doped with Al₂O₃ was hindered by the crystalline nature of those doped with SiO₂ and TiO₂. The absorption of PMMA/PEG blend doped with Al₂O₃ is higher, band gap energies were decreased from 4.90 eV for PMMA/PEG blend to 4.03 eV, 3.09 eV, and 2.09 eV for SiO₂, TiO₂, and Al₂O₃ doped PMMA/PEG blend, respectively. The dielectric constant, ε' has a high value (2 × 10⁴) for samples PMMA/PEG and SiO₂/PMMA/PEG. While dielectric loss <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mfenced><mml:msup><mml:mi>ε</mml:mi> <mml:mo>″</mml:mo></mml:msup> </mml:mfenced> </mml:math> -values decreased to < 100 for TiO₂/PMMA/PEG and Al₂O₃/PMMA/PEG. Further, the fabricated composite SiO₂/PMMA/PEG led to improvement the optical and dielectric properties compared with PMMA/PEG for optoelectronic such as manufacturing of optical fiber cables application. The results show TiO₂/PMMA/PEG and Al₂O₃/PMMA/PEG are multifunctional can be used as low-permittivity nanodielectric and substrates to design the next generation of flexible electronic devices.