Enabling Polymer Single Crystals to Be High-Performance Dielectric

Semicrystalline polymer dielectrics (SPDs) are highly sought-after state-of-the-art dielectric materials. As the disorder in SPDs degrades their electrical properties, homogeneously ordered SPDs are desired. However, complex crystallization behaviors of polymers make such homogeneity elusive. Polymer lamellar single crystals (PLSCs), the most regularly-ordered form of SPDs possible under mild crystallizing conditions, are ideal platforms for understanding and developing high-performance dielectric materials. Here, a typical and widely used SPD, polyethylene (PE) is selected as the model material. We successfully obtained, large, uniform, and high-quality PE PLSCs and devised a non-destructive strategy to construct PE PLSC-based vertical capacitors. These nanometer-thick capacitors exhibit exceptional dielectric properties, with a high breakdown strength of 6.95 MV/cm and a low dielectric constant of 2.14±0.07, that outperform the properties of any existing neat PE. This work provides novel insights into exploring the performance possibility of ordered SPDs and reveals the PLSCs as potential high-performance dielectric materials.