Dielectric polymers with high energy density with low loss at high electric fields are highly desired for many energy storage and regulation applications. A polar-fluoropolymer blend consisting of a high energy density polar-fluoropolymer of poly(vinylidene fluoride-chlorotrifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-CTFE)) with a low dielectric loss polymer of poly(ethylene-chlorotrifluoroethylene) (ECTFE) was developed and investigated. We show that the two polymers are partially miscible which leads to blends with high energy density and low loss. Moreover, by introducing crosslinking to further tailor the nano-structures of the blends a markedly reduction of losses in the blend films at high field can be achieved. The crosslinked blend films show a dielectric constant of 7 with a dielectric loss of 1% at low field. Furthermore, the blends maintain a high energy density and low loss (∼3%) at high electric fields (> 250 MV/m).

Besides energy density, the electric loss at high electric fields is another major concern for many capacitor applications. This paper presents recent works in developing high energy density low loss polymer capacitors. In order to reduce the dielectric loss while maintaining high energy density in poly(vinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene) P(VDF-HFP) and P(VDF-CTFE) (CTFE: Chlorotrifluoroethylene) based polymers, a polymer blend approach was investigated. We show that by blending P(VDF-CTFE) with a proper low loss polymer such as poly(ethylene- chlorotrifluoroethylene) (ECTFE) can lead to marked improvement in the loss of dielectric films. In this study, P(VDF-CTFE) blends films with different wt% of ECTFE have been examined to find a balance between dielectric constant and the loss. In addition, crosslink in the blends has been employed to further improve the dielectric performance of the blends. The results indicate that these blends exhibit an excellent performance: relatively high dielectric constant (~ 6~7) and low loss (~ 0.01) at 1 kHz. For the crosslink blend films, the high field loss is reduced to below 5% with a discharged energy density 4.3 J/cm3 under a field of 300 MV/m.