Abstract
Formation of functional composite materials with desired properties is important for advanced application development. However, formation of a homogenous composite material via conventional mixing methods still remains a challenge due to agglomeration. Therefore, this work reports and demonstrates the formation of a homogeneous poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA)-indium tin oxide (ITO) composite with high visible light transparency (up to 90%) with an excellent shielding effect of infra-red (IR) via a facile electrostatic assembly method. This PMMA-ITO composite with good transparency and an IR shielding effect has good potential to be used in the automobile industry for vehicle windscreens as well as in heat preservation or preventive technology. The IR shielding rate is demonstrated to be controllable by changing the amount of ITO nanoparticles additive. This finding would provide a platform for development of IR optical related polymeric composite materials.
Highlights
In materials design, polymer matrix nanocomposites are deemed to be a new generation of high performance materials with desired properties
As polysodium styrenesulfonate (PSS) is a long polymeric chain and given the nanoscale size of the indium tin oxide (ITO) nanoparticles at approximately 50 nm, it is thought that the long chain of PSS could have formed a random matrix chain and wrapped several ITO nanoparticles causing this phenomenon
This phenomenon was observed by Peng et al, where PSS-modified ITO nanoparticles fabricated in their work demonstrated preferential deposition on the surface defects on the paper’s fibril structure [21]
Summary
Polymer matrix nanocomposites are deemed to be a new generation of high performance materials with desired properties. This is largely due to the controllability of the physical and chemical properties by adjusting the composition of organic and inorganic materials in the composite. The properties of PMMA such as good optical clarity, high mechanical strength, good thermal stability and amorphous polymer processing dimensional stability have made it a good host candidate for the addition of transparent functional fillers to obtain a desired functional transparent composite material [1,2,3]. The application of PMMA-ITO composites for IR filtering is yet to be investigated and it is an interesting application to venture into
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