Fabrication of transparent polymer-inorganic hybrid material
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R8.45.1
Fabrication of transparent polymer-inorganic hybrid material S. Li*, M. S. Toprak*, Y. S. Jo**, D. K. Kim†, M. Muhammed* *
Materials Science and Engineering, The Royal Institute of Technology, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden, [email protected] **
Laboratoire de Médecine Régénérative et de Pharmacobiologie, Integrative Biosciences Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland †
Institute for Science & Technology in Medicine, Keele University, ST4 7QB, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT Polymer-inorganic hybrid materials composed of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and zinc compounds were prepared by sol-gel in-situ transition polymerization of zinc complex in PMMA matrix. Zinc acetate dihydrate dissolved in ethanol was used as the inorganic precursor. Monoethanolamine (MEA) acted as a complexing agent to control the hydrolysis of zinc acetate to produce a zinc compound network, and then PMMA, formed in-situ through a radical polymerization, were chemically bonded to the forming zinc compound network to realize a hybrid material. Transparent homogenous hybrid materials with slight colours from pink to yellow were fabricated by varying the composition. TEM, FT-IR were employed to investigate structural and physical properties. The UV-shielding effect was evaluated by UV-VIS. The low content of zinc (around 0.02 wt%) and the fine particle size rendered it visibly transparent and capable of greatly attenuating UV radiation in the full UV range. INTRODUCTION Organic-inorganic hybrid materials with a polymer matrix have attracted considerable interest since they usually combine desirable properties from inorganic and polymer components.[1,2] These hybrid materials are mostly produced by a sol-gel in-situ polymerization process, which can generate a three-dimensional inorganic network by wet chemical routes. Organic starting materials, such as metal alkoxides and organosiloxanes are always used to incorporate a variety of inorganic oxides such as silica[2], alumina[3], titania[4] and zirconia[5] into polymers. One important advantage of sol-gel process is its versatility to obtain homogeneous distribution of organic-inorganic hybrid materials at various molecular and nanometer scales with different structural characteristics and morphology.[6,7] Exposure to UV light is harmful for human beings causing problems as skin cancer and eye problems. Furthermore, it is also detrimental to buildings bleaching and drying out the wood floors, fading the colour of paintings etc. Therefore, it is of great importance to raise efficient protection from UV to reduce the damages that can be promoted by UV exposure. The target of UV protection, therefore, should be to shield both UVB radiation (290-320 nm) which is the principal cause of the sunburn reaction and UVA radiation (320-400 nm) which has been shown to decrease the immunological response of skin cells.[8] There has been some work in this field to
R8.45.2
protect from the harmful UV radiation by using inorganic oxide particles embedded in a polymeri
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