Preparation Of Novel Transparent Inorganic/ Organic Polymer Nanocomposite Materials

With the development of optical materials, conventional optical materials can not satisfy the requirements in micromation, versatility and integration for materials and devices. So the researches and preparation for optical materials with high property and high functionality have provided more opportunities and challenges.The conventional optical materials consist of inorganic and organic (polymer) materials. The inorganic materials have good mechanical properties (such as high strength, high hardness and high rigidity), high refractive index, large Abbe's numbers, good optical transparency and thermal stability,but it is difficulty to process for inorganic materials. Polymer optical materials as the substitute of inorganic materials have been widely used in lenses, optical fibers, optical waveguides, optical coatings, optoelectronic devices and antireflection coatings due to the advantages of lightweight, flexibility, impact resistance, easily process ability, dye ability and excellent optical properties. However, the polymer materials have the disadvantages of low surface hardness, narrow change range of refractive index (1.3～1.7), low heat-resistance. Thus, one of the current leading research directions on polymer optical materials is to improve these shortcomings of polymer materials and research the materials with more outstanding properties in order to meet the needs in high property and high precision for optical materials. Furthermore, the approach of inorganic/organic polymer nanocomposites to prepare for multifarious new kinds of materials enables numerous researchers to focus attention upon it. Comparing with the pure inorganic and pure compound organic materials, inorganic/organic polymer nanocomposites has the unparalleled advantages.In this paper, by designed varied courses and methods, it is successful to realize the compounds between inorganic nanoparticles and organic polymer substrate and has preparation for a series of new transparent inorganic/organic polymer nanocomposites materials by controlling the size and the aggregation of the inorganic phase. These methods extend the ideas of preparation; and these nanocomposites materials prepared by these methods have potential application aspect.In chapter Two, we compounded inorganic nanophase such as ZrO₂, TiO₂ to the epoxy resins through the sol-gel method, and two new kinds of high refractive index optical compound membrane materials was gained by using appropriate coupling agent to control the size and the aggregation of the inorganic phase. These inorganic / organic nanocomposites materials have potential applications in the field of optical coating. Both FTIR and DSC analysis indicate that there is chemical bonding between the inorganic phase and epoxy matrixes. TGA analysis also suggests that the inorganic phase were successfully incorporated into epoxy matrixes; TEM and AFM illuminate the phase distribute considerably equally without phase separation, and these guarantee the high smoothness and transparency of the nanocomposites materials. The refractive index of the nanocomposites materials can be tuned in a certain range continuously by change the content of inorganic nanophase.In chapter Three, via choosing and tailor the materials and designing the preparation route, we design a simple and environment-friend one-pot way to synthesize ZnS / polymer transparent bulk nanocomposites. And we successfully prepared a series of ZnS / polymer nanocomposites by this way. The content of ZnS nanoparticles can be reached to 20 wt%. DMMA has the similar structure with DMF and have higher stabilization with ZnS nanoparticles. At the same time, DMAA is a kind of polymeric monomer. So we choose DMMA to be the solvent, after the ZnS nanoparticles have been created in DMAA, we polymerize the system to obtain the ZnS / polymer nanocomposites materials. We can improve ZnS nanoparticles have been created through the TEM and XRD. TEM showed that the size of inorganic nanoparticles is around 3nm.and they distribute uniformity; TGA showed the practical content of the inorganic nanoparticles accord well with theory. FTIR prove that there are covalent bonds between inorganic nanoparticles and organic matrix. UV-vis spectra proved the nanocomposite materials has good transparency. This chapter provides a new way to synthesis nanocomposite materials more than receive a series of nanocomposites. In chapter Four, we prepared a series of ZrO₂ / polymer bulk nanocomposite materials by in situ method in polymer. During the preparation, the H2O which was used for the hydrolysis of zirconium tetra-n-butoxide come from the by-product of the esterification of MA and alcohol. At the same time, the ZrO₂ nanoparticles were formed in the solidified polymer, so the hindrance of space makes the ZrO₂ particles in nanoscale and no any aggregation. The FTIR analysis proved the synthesis of ester in the system, TEM and XRD analysis also proved ZrO₂ nanoparticles have been built. The XRD result showed that the ZrO₂ nanoparticles in this system were undefined structure. TGA analysis proved the content of the nanoparticles in the system was according with the academic calculated one well. A series of physical tests such as water uptake and refractive index also proved the excellent physical character of the compound materials. The method showed in this chapter could extend to the preparation of ZrO₂ and other organic polymeric matrixes nanocomposites materials, which has widely practicability.