Polymer Bulletin, Vol.76, No.2, 903-918, 2019
Optical properties of PVC/Al2O3 nanocomposite films
In this work, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) polymer films doped with 0, 2, 4, and 6wt% Al2O3 nanoparticles with average size of 10nm were prepared by solution casting route. Al2O3 nanoparticles are found to possess rhombohedral crystal structure, and PVC is partly crystallized as confirmed with XRD analysis. SEM images showed that Al2O3 nanoparticles are well distributed in thePVC film surface. The direct optical energy gap (E-opt) decreased from 5.05 to 3.60eV and Urbach energy (E-U) increased with increasing Al2O3 concentration. The typical excitation energy for electronic transitions (E-0), the dispersion energy (E-d), refractive index, dipole strength (f), average oscillator wavelength ((0)), oscillator strength parameter (S-0), optical conductivity, and both static and high-frequency dielectric constants are found to increase with increasing Al2O3 content. The third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility (((3))) and the nonlinear refractive index (n(2)) were estimated. Also, the ratio of free carriers to effective mass (N/m*) increased from 2.69x10(57) to 170.91 x 10(57) m(-3)kg(-1) with increasing Al2O3 nanoparticles percentage. Finally, the group velocity dispersion (GVD), dispersion coefficient for material dispersion (D), and third-order dispersion (TOD) are found to increase upon increasing Al2O3 filler ratio.