Correlation between the thickness and properties of the ethanol treated GO–PDMS based composite materials

Abstract

This paper presents a correlation between the size of the fabricated GO/PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) composite material with the properties such as transmittance, index of refraction, band-gap and dielectric properties to understand the important role of the thickness-dependent properties for the future development of the smart materials and devices. For this purpose, three different thicknesses (500 µm, 1250 µm, and 2000 µm) GO/PDMS composites were fabricated with 1 wt% of ethanol-treated GO as a filler material, and optical properties such as optical transparency, band-gap, refractive index and dielectric constant were investigated. The experimental results indicated that band-gap, refractive index and dielectric constant are thickness-dependent and by controlling the thickness of the composites these properties can be tuned for development of future smart materials for different applications such as MEMS, sensors, electronic devices and biomedical applications. The possible reasons for obtained experimental results are also discussed.