Abstract
Biopolymer-based materials have been of particular interest as alternatives to synthetic polymers due to their low toxicity, biodegradability and biocompatibility. Among them, chitosan is one of the most studied ones and has recently been investigated for the application as solid state polymer electrolytes. Furthermore, it can serve as a host for luminescent species such as rare earth ions, opening up the possibility of combined electro-optical functionality, of particular interest for electroluminescent devices. In this study, we perform a fundamental, initial, investigation of chitosan based luminescent materials doped with EuIII and LiI triflate salts, from the structural, photophysical and conducting points of view. Because the host presents a broad emission band in the blue to green, while EuIII emits in the red, fine-tuning of emission colour and/or generation of white light is proven possible, by proper combination of optimized composition and excitation scheme. Europium lifetimes (5D0) are in the range 270-350 µs and quantum yields are up to 2%. Although LiI does not interfere with the luminescent properties, it grants ion-conducting properties to the material suggesting that a combination of both properties could be useful in the development of electro-luminescent devices.
Highlights
The low toxicity, biodegradability and biocompatibility of chitosan makes it one of the most widely studied polymers from the application point of view
We extend the investigation to natural-polymer-based membranes, containing EuIII and LiI, which might offer the possibility of increased electrochemical functionality
The sample temperature was evaluated by means of a type K thermocouple placed close to the electrolyte film and impedance measurements were carried out at frequencies between 65 kHz and 500 mHz using an Autolab PGSTAT-12 (Eco Chemie), over the temperature range 20 to 90 oC
Summary
The low toxicity, biodegradability and biocompatibility of chitosan makes it one of the most widely studied polymers from the application point of view. Similar results were obtained for agar-based films.[32] Other SEM images reproduced in Figure 3 (b, c and d) show that the samples containing mixture of both salts exhibit an irregular texture, and are very similar to the samples of solid polymer electrolyte based on polyethylene glycol (PEG) with high LiClO4 concentration.[22] The micrograph of ChiEu0.1Li0.04 (Figure 3b) shows a porous morphology evolving from large to lower pore size.
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