Electrospinning Synthesis And Properties Explorations Of Luminescent SiO₂-based Hybrid Oxide Fibers

Inorganic solid luminescent materials are widely applied in many fields such as illumination,information displays,and medical diagnosis and have a close connection with people's daily life.As a new type of inorganic solid luminescent material,the defect-related luminescent materials exhibit the characteristics of low toxicity,stability,environment-friendly,low cost property and good biocompatibility.Therefore,it is of great significance to develop this type of luminescent materials.The physical and chemical proeprties of the inorganic functional materials are closely related to their composition,particle size,phase structure,surfaces,morphologies,and so on.The one-dimensional nanofibers attract much attention due to their large aspect ratio,high specific surface area and a variety of morphologies,etc.In this study,two kinds of hybrid fibers with defect-related luminescence properties were prepared by a simple and efficient electrospinning route:SiO₂/ZnO mesoporous hollow hybrid fiberchains and SiO₂/SnO₂ hybrid fibers.The morphology,formation process,luminescent properties as well as the applications of the as-obtained fibers have been investigated in detail.The SiO₂/ZnO hybrid fiberchains with uniform morphology were prepared by electrospinning technique.The mesoporous hollow hybrid fiberchains were formed after an annealing process at high temperature.The formation process of the samples was also investigated.In addition,the luminescence properties of samples prepared by sol-gel method and electrospinning route were compared.It can be found that the fiberchains samples prepared by electrospinning route shows stronger luminescence indensity than the samples obtained by sol-gel method.The luminescence mechanism of the samples was deduced on the basis of the fluorescence lifetime and experimental conditions.The results show that the fluorescence intensity increased with the increase of Zn content.Moreover,the sample exhibits some advantage of mesoporous structure,large specific surface area and good biocompatibility.The sustained drug release behaviors of the SiO₂/ZnO hybrid fiberchains in buffer solution with different pH value with doxorubicin?DOX?as a drug model were studied.The results show that SiO₂/ZnO hybrid fiberchains may be potential applications in controlled drug release,targeted therapy,disease diagnosis and treatment as a new drug carrier.The SiO₂/SnO₂ hybrid fibers were prepared by electrospinning method.The sample has a strong visible emission at 278 nm ultraviolet excitation.The sample exhibits stronger luminescence than that of the sample prepared by sol-gel method,which shows that the electrospinning method not only forms the one-dimensional morphology of the sample,but also improves the luminescent properties.Besides,the luminescent mechanism may be caused by the oxygen vacancies of the sample.Moreover,the effects of different molar ratios of Sn and Si and annealing temperature on the luminescent properties of the samples were also studied in detail.As a new type of highly efficient and environmentally friendly luminescent material,the as-synthesized SiO₂/SnO₂ hybrid fibers may be potentially applied in fields of optical displays and optoelectronic devices.