Visible-Light-Sensitive Triazine-Coated Silica Nanoparticles: A Dual Role Approach to Polymer Nanocomposite Materials with Enhanced Properties

Abstract

Nanocomposite materials are of great interest because of their superior properties. Besides the traditional synthesis methods that require high temperatures or toxic solvents, photopolymerization technology provides a simple, low-cost, and environmentally friendly route in preparing nanocomposites. In this research, the preparation of blue-light-sensitive triazine derivative-coated silica nanoparticles is presented. The resulting triazine-coated silica nanoparticles can play a dual role, i.e., acting as both photoinitiators to trigger photopolymerization reactions under the irradiation of LED@410 nm and fillers to endow the produced photopolymer nanocomposite materials with enhanced properties. Specifically, the triazine-coated silica nanoparticles can successfully induce free radical polymerization of trimethylolpropane triacrylate efficiently under the irradiation of LED@410 nm and demonstrate comparable photoinitiation ability to the triazine derivative-based photoinitiator. The effects of different loading amounts of triazine-coated silica nanoparticles toward the photopolymerization kinetics are also evaluated. By coating with the triazine derivative, the nanoparticles show good dispersion in the polymer matrix and significantly reduce the shrinkage of the samples during the photopolymerization. Moreover, the photocured nanocomposites exhibit enhanced migration stability and mechanical properties when an optimal amount of triazine-coated silica nanoparticles is added in the formulation.

Visible-Light-Sensitive Polymerizable and Polymeric Triazine-Based Photoinitiators with Enhanced Migration Stability

“…With the knowledge of the fact that the free radicals generated from the self-cleavage of MT are the active species for the initiation of the following polymerization of trimethylolpropane triacrylate (TMPTA) [46], the photoinitiation ability of MT is efficient for the free radical polymerization of acrylates under the irradiation of LED at 400 nm in terms of the final double bond conversion (35.6%) and maximum rate of photopolymerization (R p,max : 4.21 s −1 ) (Figure 5a and Table 2). Furthermore, the higher intensity violet LED at 410 nm (110 mW cm −2 ) improves the photopolymerization of TMPTA in the presence of MT (Figure 5b), in line with the results reported previously [42,46,54]. To evaluate the effect of modification of MT structure on their photoinitiation abilities, the photopolymerization of TMPTA was carried out in laminate under both LED at 400 nm and LED at 410 nm (Figure 5 and Table 2).…”

“…This allows the crosslinking of photoinitiators into the prepared photopolymer networks, which significantly decreases their mobility [17,18,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Another strategy is to develop the macromolecular photoinitiators from the low molecular weight photoinitiators, including bisacylphosphine oxide (BAPO), 1-hydroxy-cyclohexyl-phenylketone (HCAP), 2-hydroxy-2-methyl-1-phenyl propanone (HMPP), and naphthalimide derivatives [35][36][37][38], and the developed macromolecular photoinitiators were well-known for their low leachability due to the significantly reduced diffusion coefficient of macromolecules in both the fluid layer and polymer matrix [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. However, most of them only contain a low content of photoinitiator; thus, they require high mass concentrations [35][36][37][38][39][40][41]43].…”

Polymeric membranes through self-initiation and self-polymerization for high-performance bioethanol pervaporation

“…35 Besides, its photo-initiation reaction efficiency would be relatively low under weak light intensity. [36][37][38] The 1173IPS shows a negligible absorption of >365 nm, 29,39 while the electromagnetic radiation from FTIR and NMR instruments is in the region of 2.5-25 mm and 106-109 mm, respectively. [40][41][42][43][44] Therefore, 1173IPS is insensitive to the electromagnetic radiation from FTIR and 1 H NMR.…”

Fused carbazole–coumarin–ketone dyes: high performance and photobleachable photoinitiators in free radical photopolymerization for deep photocuring under visible LED light irradiation

“…[1][2][3] In the past decades, photopolymerization has been widely used in various industrial fields. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Photoinitiators (PIs) are crucial for photopolymerization because they are responsible for the conversion of light energy into chemical energy. 15,16 In photopolymerization, mild and environmentally friendly irradiation conditions are necessary.…”