Capacitance study of a polystyrene nanoparticle capacitor using impedance spectroscopy

Abstract

In this study, a metal-insulator-metal capacitor structure is fabricated using polystyrene nanoparticles. Impedance spectroscopy is used to evaluate the performance of this capacitor in which we found a significant magnitude increment in capacitance and loss tangent compared with an equivalent ideal capacitor with continuous polystyrene layer and same geometry. Capacitance values up to 11.7 and loss tangent values up to 387 (at 0.1 Hz) larger than the expected for a continuous polystyrene MIM capacitor are achieved. The capacitor shows a good stable capacitive behaviour in the frequency range from 0.1 Hz to 100 kHz at room temperature, 30 °C, 40 °C and 50 °C without an effective relaxation process. Nyquist, capacitance, loss tangent and normalized powers curves are analysed by modified Randles model. Also, a slight decrease in the capacitance value at 50 °C is observed, which that may be attributed to space charge localized at the nanoparticles interface and that are affected by the temperature changes.