Functional nanocomposites based on the infusion or in situ generation of nanoparticles into amphiphilic epoxy gels.

ANA LEDO-SUAREZ; JULIETA PUIG; ILEANA A. ZUCCHI; CRISTINA E. HOPPE; MARıA L. GOMEZ; ROBERTO ZYSLER; CARLOS RAMOS; M. CLAUDIA MARCHI; SARA ALDABE BILMES; MASSIMO LAZZARI; M. ARTURO LOPEZ-QUINTELA; ROBERTO J. J. WILLIAMS

JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY

Lugar: london; Año: 2010 vol. 20 p. 10135 - 10145

0959-9428

The production of nanocomposites with functional properties via the infusion of preformednanoparticles (NPs) or their in situ generation inside an amphiphilic epoxy gel is reported. The gel wassynthesized by the reaction of a diepoxy monomer based on diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A with ann-alkylamine, followed by annealing the resulting linear polymers above their glass transitiontemperatures to produce physical gelation through tail-to-tail association of pendant alkyl chains. Someof the advantages of these polymer gels are: (a) they have a low crosslink density and can therefore besignificantly swollen by several organic solvents, (b) the presence of pendant alkyl chains providesa convenient chemical environment for the stabilization of NPs coated with alkyl chains, (c) the presenceof secondary hydroxyls and tertiary amine groups in the polar backbone of polymer chains can be used tocoordinate and reduce different precursors of NPs. Preformed NPs could be successfully infused into thegels keeping their optical properties (e.g., CdSe quantum dots) ormagnetic behavior (e.g., g-Fe2O3@oleicacid NPs) in the resulting nanocomposite. In situ generation of Au and Ag NPs (average size close to10 nm) inside the amphiphilic gels was produced by infusing HAuCl4 or AgNO3 followed by reduction tothe corresponding metals with secondary alcohols present in the polymer backbone, at 100 C.Amphiphilic gels were employed as hosts for the in situ precipitation of gold(I)-dodecanethiolate leadingto films exhibiting a red emission (638 nm) when excited with UV light (300 nm).