Titanium Oxo-Clusters: Vesatile Nano-Objects for the Design of Hybrid Compounds

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe description of three titanium oxo-clusters and their use as inorganic components of hybrid organic-inorganic materials are reported. The first approach consists to add titanium oxo-clusters, [Ti6O4(C6H5COO)8(OPrn)8], in an ORMOCER⊗ based hybrid medium. Nano-sized titanium oxo-clusters combined with the chemical nature of the components, allow the tuning of the optical properties, especially the refractive index. The second approach consists to associate functionalized titanium oxo-clusters to elaborate hybrid materials with perfectly defined inorganic domains. The more relevant example of titanium oxo-cluster to build hybrid networks from nano-building blocks is the oxo-cluster [Ti16O16(OEt)32]. Indeed, the nature and the number of functional groups at the surface of these metallic oxo-clusters can be tuned in order to generate cross-linking agents of organic polymers. The studies of the structure-property relationships of the resulting nanocomposites have been investigated. Finally the structure of a purely carboxylate oxo-clusters is briefly described. This new family of stable oxo-clusters opens the way for the production of original hybrid compounds.