High-Transparency Polymer Nanocomposites Enabled by Polymer-Graft Modification of Particle Fillers

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• 作者：Alei Dang ; Satyajeet Ojha ; Chin Ming Hui ; Clare Mahoney ; Krzysztof Matyjaszewski ; Michael R. Bockstaller
• 刊名：Langmuir
• 出版年：2014
• 出版时间：December 9, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：30
• 期：48
• 页码：14434-14442
• 全文大小：417K
• ISSN：1520-5827

文摘

The role of polymeric ligands on the optical transparency of polymer鈥搈atrix composites is analyzed by evaluating the effect of surface modification on the scattering cross-section of particle fillers in uniform particle dispersions. For the particular case of poly(styrene-r-acrylonitrile)-grafted silica particles embedded in poly(methyl methacrylate), it is shown that the tethering of polymeric chains with appropriate optical properties (such as to match the effective refractive index of the brush particle to the embedding matrix) facilitates the reduction of the particle scattering cross-section by several orders of magnitude as compared to pristine particle analogues. The conditions for minimizing the scattering cross-section of particle fillers by polymer-graft modification are established on the basis of effective medium as well as core鈥搒hell Mie theory and validated against experimental data on uniform liquid and solid particle dispersions. Effective medium theory is demonstrated to provide robust estimates of the 鈥渙ptimum polymer-graft composition鈥?to minimize the scattering cross-section of particle fillers even in the limit of large particle dimensions (comparable to the wavelength of light). The application of polymer-graft modification to the design of large (500 nm diameter) silica particle composites with reduced scattering cross-section is demonstrated.