Research on the photochemical kinetics process of gold nanoparticle-doped photopolymer system using Raman spectroscopy

Abstract

A photopolymer system doped with gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) was studied using Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) technique in this work. In the system, polyvinyl alcohol is a binder, acrylamide and methylene-bisacrylamide are two monomers, methylene blue (MB) is a photosensitizer and triethanolamine is an initiator. Two types of Au NPs--- bare Au NPs with 13nm and 25nm diameter, and their corresponding SiO2 shell-isolated Au (Au@SiO2) NPs with ~2nm shell thickness, were prepared and doped into the photopolymer for reducing the shrinkage of holograms. The shield of SiO2 shell avoids the dark reaction originating from electron transfer between Au NPs and MB molecules. More importantly, under 633nm laser excitation, the resonance Raman scattering of MB can be triggered, and the Raman signal of MB can be enhanced greatly due to the local enhanced electromagnetic field by Au@SiO2 NPs. Both of them made the in-situ Raman detection of the photopolymer more feasible. The experimental results not only show the excitation process of MB but also display the polymerization process of the photopolymer. In addition, the excitation rate of MB and the polymerization rate of monomers can also be obtained using their time Raman spectra. This provides an experimental tool for detecting the photochemical kinetics process of the photopolymer.