Tailoring the scattering properties of particle additives using atom transfer radical polymerization

COLL 305

Michael Bockstaller1, Lindsay Bombalski2, Hongchen Dong2, and Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, km3b@andrew.cmu.edu2. (1) Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Wean Hall 4307, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890, (2) Department of Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University, 4400 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
A method is presented to suppress the scattering of inorganic nanoparticle inclusions within organic embedding media by means of polymer surface modification such as to match the effective refractive index of the resulting core-shell particle to the refractive index of the embedding medium. This contribution will discuss homogenization theories that facilitate the determination of appropriate polymer-shell compositions and demonstrate the use of novel surface modification techniques based on Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization to precisely tune both, the molecular weight and grafting density of surface-bound polymer chains. At compositions close to the theoretical prediction, vanishing of the scattering intensity is observed.
 

Polymer-Nanoparticle Systems: Theory, Simulation, Experiments
9:00 AM-12:00 PM, Tuesday, April 8, 2008 Morial Convention Center -- Rm. 227, Oral

Division of Colloid & Surface Chemistry

The 235th ACS National Meeting, New Orleans, LA, April 6-10, 2008