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We studied the effect of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles (NPs) on dielectric behavior of Na+ion-conducting salt-complexed polymer nanocomposite system formed from a binary polymer blend of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) and polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP), with the addition of both sodium metaperiodate (NaIO4) at concentration 10wt.% and TiO2NPs of size ∼10nm, at concentrations 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5wt.%. Free standing nanocomposite PEO/PVP/NaIO4/TiO2films (150μm) were characterized at room-temperature by analyzing their complex electrical impedance and dielectric spectra in the range 1Hz–1MHz. At the concentration of 3wt.% of TiO2NPs, both ion conductivity and dielectric permittivity of the PEO/PVP/NaIO4/TiO2ion-conducting dielectrics reach an enhancement by more than one order of magnitude as compared to nanoadditive-free case.

We report a significant increase of about 50% of the photoinduced birefringence in nanocomposite films of azopolymers doped with ZnO nanoparticles compared with samples made from nondoped azopolymers. This increase is most pronounced at small concentrations of the nanoparticles of 0.5% and for the amorphous polymers used in our study. We observe also an improvement of the response time of more than 25% in some of the polymers, which allows for faster and more effective polarization optical recording.