Studies On The Titanium Dioxide-polyacrylates Inorganic-organic Hybrid Materials

Titanium dioxide hybrid materials have been widely used in the areas of optic, nonlinear, photorefractive, holographic storage, UV absorbent, solar cell and photocatalytic materials because of its high thermal stability, high surface area, high photocatalysis, high refractive index and good visible light transmittance and high UV light absorbance. However, most of the polymer-based titanium dioxide hybrid materials are concentrated on the methods of direct nanoparticles dispersion and sol-gel process. For the former, there exist severe inorganic and organic phase separation and thus remarkably affect the transparency of the materials. So the surface modification of the nanoparticles is needed by way of time-consuming and complex process at high temperature. For the latter, direct precipitation happen due to the fast hydrolysis of Ti precursor. Therefore seeking a new synthesis method of hybrid materials is a hot topic wordwide. We bring forward a new synthesis method of hybrid materials by way of sol-gel process in reverse micelles and subsequent photopolymerization, with characteristics of in situ nanoparticle formation and surface modification. That is, we use acrylic acid as an organic ligand to react with titanite butoxide (TTB) to control the hydrolysis rate of TTB. At the same time, the hydrolysis and condensation reaction can be limited within the nanoscale reverse micelles "water pool" and the stable titanium dioxide nanoparticles can be obtained with narrow size distribution and then be exposed to rapid photopolymerization to further control the aggregation, conglomeration and flocculation by organic networks formed during photopolymerization.The carboxylic bidentate coordination bridges the organic phase and inorganic phase, and retrains the microseparation between them, therefore the transparent hybrid...