52 Polymer Films with Embedded Metal Nanoparticles

A. Heilmann, Polymer Films with Embedded Metal Nanoparticles, Springers Series in Materials Science, Vol. 52, Springer, Heidelberg (2002). 

For the calculations of the optical properties of polymer films with embedded nanoparticles, two routes can be selected. In the exact route, the extinction cross sections Cact(v) of single particles are calculated. The calculated extinction spectra for single particles—or, better, a summation of various excitation spectra for a particle assembly—can be compared with the experimental spectra of the embedded nanoparticles. In the statistic route, an effective dielectric function e(v) is calculated from the dielectric function of the metal e(T) and of the polymer material po(v) by using a mixing formula, the so-called effective medium theory. The optical extinction spectra calculated from the effective dielectric functions by using the Fresnel formulas can be compared with the experimental spectra. 

As such exemplary experimental material, plasma polymer thin films with embedded silver particles are selected [3]. These films were made by simultaneous or alternating plasma polymerization and metal evaporation. The films can be deposited as multilayers consisting of two polymer thin films and a nanoparticle-containing film between these films. Because of the two plasma polymer layers on either side, the particles are completely embedded in a homogeneous media. The multilayer systems are very appropriate for determining particle size and investigating the interface between metal particles and plasma polymer matrix, because here metal nanoparticles are embedded in one plane. This allows a simple determination of the particle size and shape in the TEM. 

For the following calculation, experimentally determined dielectric functions for silver [30] and for a plasma polymer [31] were taken. The effective dielectric functions e(v) were calculated with the Maxwell Garnett theory for parallel-oriented particles, equation (13). From the effective dielectric function, transmission or extinction spectra can be calculated by using the Fresnel formulas [10] for the optical system air-composite media-quartz substrate. As a further parameter, the thickness of the film with embedded particles and the thickness of other present layers that do not contain metal nanoparticles have to be included. The calculated extinction spectra can be compared with the experimental spectra. 

Figure 3. Various type of SERS active metallic nanostructures (a) metal-island films (b) metal-coated nanospheres (semi-nanoshells) (c) metal-coated random nanostructures and (d) polymer coatings embedded with metal nanoparticles. Inset An SEM image of silver-coated polystyrene spheres.

Prakash S, Chakrabarty T, Singh AK, Shahi VK (2013) Polymer thin films embedded with metal nanoparticles for electrochemical biosensors applications. Biosens Bioelectron 41 43-53... 

Sol-gel materials are also known as an excellent matrix for embedding other species due to their tunable physical properties (e.g., flexibility and transparency), high chemical stability, and mild operating conditions. Especially, electrochemical deposition of silane-based sol-gel Aims is usually carried out under mild acidic aqueous solutions at pH 3-6. This allows the co-electrodeposition of silane with nanoparticles [47-50], carbon nanotubes [51-53], metals [54-57], polymers [50,58], enzymes [52,53,59-65], bacteria [66,67], and more. Thus, most of the recent research worlcs also focus on the electrochemical deposition of sol-gel-based composite Aims, with the concern of improving the films performance in corrosion protection, electroanalysis, microextraction, and so on and further broadening the films applications. 

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