Dielectric response of makrofol-KG polycarbonate irradiated with 145 MeV Ne6+ and 100 MeV Si8+ ions

The passage of heavy ions in a track detector polymeric material produces lattice deformations. These deformations may be in the form of latent tracks or may vanish by self annealing in time. Heavy ion irradiation produces modifications in polymers in their relevant electrical, chemical and optical properties in the form of rearrangement of bonding, cross-linking, chain scission, formation of carbon rich clusters and changes in dielectric properties etc. Modification depends on the ion, its energy and fluence and the polymeric material. In the present work, a study of the dielectric response of pristine and heavy ion irradiated Makrofol-KG polycarbonate is carried out. 40 μm thick Makrofol-KG polycarbonate films were irradiated to various fluences with Si⁸⁺ ions of 100 MeV energy from Pelletron at Inter University Accelerator Centre (IUAC), New Delhi and Ne⁶⁺ ions of 145 MeV from Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Kolkata. On irradiation with heavy ions dielectric constant (ɛ′) decreases with frequency where ɛ′ increases with fluence for both the ions. Variation of loss factor (tan δ) with frequency for pristine and irradiated with Si ions reveals that tan δ increases as the frequency increases. Tan δ also increases with fluence. While Ne irradiated samples tan δ shows slight variation with frequency as well as with fluence. Tan δ has positive values indicating the dominance of inductive behavior.