Polymer-inorganic hybrids

Polymer-Inorganic Hybrid Nanocomposites through Sol-Gel Reaction.58... 

Figure 3.1 gives a hand-drawn pictorial representation of the general classes of polymer-inorganic hybrids. 

One of the important fields where carbohydrate polymer/inorganic hybrids may be successfully applied is bioactive materials, e.g., artificial bones expedient for surgery to accelerate the recovery of living bones. There has been increasing interest in hydroxyapatite (HAp) deposition onto the matrix surface of cellulose or related polysaccharide. HAp is a form of calcium phosphate, a main constituent of the inorganic phase of human bone. This kind of study is also a step on the way to exploitation of new biomimetic mineralization methods. 

In a series of papers, Jeschke and coworkers [87-90] as well as Schlick and coworkers [91, 92] studied self-assembled nanocomposite materials made from polymers and natural clays or artificial silicates. These nanocomposite materials have superior mechanical and also heat resistant properties and are hence interesting for applications in the fields of defense and protection. Such polymer-inorganic hybrid materials form complex stmctures and EPR spectroscopy has to be combined with other physical techniques such as NMR spectroscopy, small and... 

As shown in Figure 5.9, randomly mixed polymer-inorganic BHJ and ordered heterojunction (OHJ) are two common structures to prepare hybrid solar cells [44]. Similar to polymer-fullerene BHJ solar cells, polymer-inorganic hybrid BHJ solar cells (Figure 5.9a) can overcome the limitations of bilayer devices having small donor-acceptor interfacial area with inefficient exciton dissociation. NCRs can be surface modified to render them soluble in organic solvents (such as chloroform, toluene and chlorobenzene) to facilitate solution processability. Various surface... 

Figure 5.9 Two common device configurations used for polymer-inorganic hybrid solar cells (a) BHJ and (b) OHJ. Reproduced from Ref [44] with permission from The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Table 5.2 summarizes the performance of most reported polymer-inorganic hybrid solar cells prepared either by physical filling polymers or in-situ synthesis of polymers in the inorganic nanostructured pores. 

For nanofibers and nanotubes, backbone modification refers to selective chemical transformation of one or more of the core blocks. In our preparation of nanotubes from the PI-PCEMA-PtBA and PS-PCEMA-PtBA triblock nanofibers, the core PI and PtBA blocks were sculpted away either fully or partially. These reactions are examples of nanofiber backbone modification. One can also consider inorganic reactions carried out inside one of the block copolymer phases to be a kind of backbone modification. These reactions lead to the formation of interesting polymer-inorganic hybrid nanostructures. This topic will be reviewed in the following paragraphs. 

An efficient Forster resonance energy transfer takes place from the donor PVK to the acceptor, the silicon nanoparticles. This makes the composite a promising material for polymer inorganic hybrid light-emitting diodes [90]. 

Z. He, I. Pinnau, A. Morisato, Novel nano structured polymer-inorganic hybrid membranes for vapor-gas separation, in Advanced Materials for Membrane Separation, I. Pinnau, B. D. Freeman (Eds.), ACS Symposium Series 876, American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 2004. 

Advances in polymer-inorganic hybrids as membrane materials... 

Recent progress in polymer-inorganic hybrid membranes... 

Depending on the nature of the particles embedded in the polymeric matrix, polymer-inorganic hybrid membranes can be divided into two nonexclusive groups mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) and nanocomposite membranes (NCMs). 

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