Novel biodegradable low-κ dielectric nanomaterials from natural polyphenols

Biodegradable natural polymers and macromolecules for transient electronics have great potential to reduce the environmental footprint and provide opportunities to create emerging and environmentally sustainable technologies. Creating complex electronic devices from biodegradable materials requires exploring their chemical design pathways to use them as substrates, dielectric insulators, conductors, and semiconductors. While most research exploration has been conducted using natural polymers as substrates for electronic devices, a very few natural polymers have been explored as dielectric insulators, but they possess high dielectric constants. Herein, for the first time, we have demonstrated a natural polyphenol-based nanomaterial, derived from tannic acid as a low-κ dielectric material by introducing a highly nanoporous framework with a silsesquioxane core structure. Utilizing natural tannic acid, porous "raspberry-like" nanoparticles (TA-NPs) are prepared by a sol-gel polymerization method, starting from reactive silane unit-functionalized tannic acid. Particle composition, thermal stability, porosity distribution, and morphology are analyzed, confirming the mesoporous nature of the nanoparticles with an average pore diameter ranging from 19 to 23 nm, pore volume of 0.032 cm³ g^-1 and thermal stability up to 350 °C. The dielectric properties of the TA-NPs, silane functionalized tannic acid precursor, and tannic acid are evaluated and compared by fabricating thin film capacitors under ambient conditions. The dielectric constants (κ) are found to be 2.98, 2.84, and 2.69 (±0.02) for tannic acid, tannic acid-silane, and TA-NPs, respectively. The unique chemical design approach developed in this work provides us with a path to create low-κ biodegradable nanomaterials from natural polyphenols by weakening their polarizability and introducing high mesoporosity into the structure.