Surface Functionalized ZnO Particles Designed for the Use in Transparent Nanocomposites

Abstract

Summary: We present a new method for preparing a nanocomposite containing highly dispersed ZnO nanoparticles. The essence of this approach is the formation of surface modified inorganic particles and their homogeneous incorporation into a polymeric matrix. Therefore, an inverse emulsion of an inorganic salt, for example, zinc acetate stabilized by amphiphilic statistical copolymers, is prepared. By hydrolysis under basic conditions ZnO particles of a size below 100 nm are formed within the micelles. As the surfactant remains adsorbed on the surface of the particles, a surface functionalization with hydrophobic chains is performed. These chains can be considered as compatibilizers for blending of the ZnO nanoparticles in PMMA affording transparent nanocomposite films avoiding particle aggregated. The present approach is in principle applicable to all nanoparticles prepared in a sol‐gel process.TEM image of redispersed ZnO particles.magnified imageTEM image of redispersed ZnO particles.

Giant Enhancement in UV Response of ZnO Nanobelts by Polymer Surface-Functionalization

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Synthesis of Silver-Doped Zinc Oxide Nanocomposite by Pulse Mode Ultrasonication and Its Characterization Studies

“…ZnO has attracted intensive research effort for its unique properties and versatile applications in transparent electronics, chemical sensors, and spin electronics [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. A variety of metal oxides like zinc oxide, titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ), and silicon dioxide (SiO 2 ) and different techniques such as chemical coprecipitation [9,10], sol-gel process [11,12] chemical vapour deposition [13], thermal decomposition [14,15], hydrothermal synthesis [16,17], solidstate reaction [18], spray pyrolysis [19], vapour-liquid-solid method [20], and microemulsion precipitation [21][22][23] have been used so far. Hingorani et al also reported the synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) and it was the first study using reverse microemulsion in the early 1990s [24,25].…”

High-mobility pentacene phototransistor with nanostructured SiO2 gate dielectric synthesized by sol–gel method

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