School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology , Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
J Am Chem Soc. 2015 Sep 16;137(36):11760-7. doi: 10.1021/jacs.5b06736. Epub 2015 Sep 4.
Organic-inorganic nanocomposites composed of polymers and nanoparticles offer a vast design space of potential material properties, depending heavily on the properties of these two constituents and their spatial arrangement. The ability to place polymers in direct contact with functional nanoparticles via strong bonding, that is, stable chemical interaction without the dissociation of surface capping polymers, provides a means of preventing nanoparticles from aggregation and increasing their dispersibility in nanocomposites, and promises opportunities to explore new properties and construction of miniaturized devices. However, this is still a challenging issue and has not yet been largely explored. Here, we report an unconventional strategy to create in situ organic-inorganic nanocomposites comprising monodisperse ferroelectric nanoparticles directly and permanently tethered with ferroelectric polymers by capitalizing on rationally designed amphiphilic star-like diblock copolymer as nanoreactors. The diameter of ferroelectric nanoparticles and the chain length of ferroelectric polymers can be precisely tuned. The dielectric and ferroelectric properties of nanocomposites containing different sizes of ferroelectric nanoparticles were scrutinized. Such bottom-up crafting of intimate organic-inorganic nanocomposites offers new levels of tailorability to nanostructured materials and promises new opportunities for achieving exquisite control over the surface chemistry and properties of nanocomposites with engineered functionality for diverse applications in energy conversion and storage, catalysis, electronics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology.
由聚合物和纳米粒子组成的有机-无机纳米复合材料提供了广阔的潜在材料性能设计空间，这在很大程度上取决于这两种成分的性质及其空间排列。通过强键合（即稳定的化学相互作用，而不会使表面封端聚合物解离）将聚合物直接置于与功能纳米粒子接触的能力，提供了一种防止纳米粒子聚集并增加其在纳米复合材料中分散性的方法，并有望探索新的性能和小型化器件的构建。然而，这仍然是一个具有挑战性的问题，尚未得到广泛探索。在这里，我们报告了一种通过合理设计的两亲性星形嵌段共聚物作为纳米反应器，直接和永久地将单分散铁电纳米粒子与铁电聚合物键合，从而创造原位有机-无机纳米复合材料的非传统策略。铁电纳米粒子的直径和铁电聚合物的链长可以精确调整。研究了含有不同尺寸铁电纳米粒子的纳米复合材料的介电和铁电性能。这种自下而上的亲密有机-无机纳米复合材料的制造为纳米结构材料提供了新的可定制水平，并为实现对纳米复合材料的表面化学和性能的精细控制提供了新的机会，这些纳米复合材料具有工程功能，可用于能量转换和存储、催化、电子、纳米技术和生物技术等多种应用。
