Thermostable gold nanoparticle-doped silicone elastomer for optical materials

Abstract

When gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are blended with matrix polymers for material engineering of a nanoparticle doped polymer matrix, one frequently observes nanoparticles’ aggregation due to their large interface energy. In this work, poly(dimethyl siloxane)-capped AuNPs (AuNP@PDMS) were successfully synthesized via hydrosilylation from alkenyl-terminated AuNPs and hydride-terminated PDMS polymer. The AuNP@PDMS particles have a well dispersed state after blending with polysiloxane elastomer prepolymer because the same component of the shell polymer to matrix polymer should decrease maximumly the interface influence between the nanoparticles and the polymer matrix. Therefore, uniform AuNP-doped silicone elastomer material with brilliant red color was obtained after vulcanization. The average molar absorption coefficient of doped AuNPs in silicone elastomer was deduced to be 3.06×107cm−1mol−1. Such AuNP-doped silicone elastomer showed good thermostability and obvious optical limiting performance. The intrinsic homogeneity of shell polymer on nanoparticles and matrix polymer is a remarkable advantage to diminish the interface influence in blending of nanoparticles with polymer matrix, thus could provide uniform nanoparticle-doped polymeric materials.