Publication date: 8th January 2019
Inorganic-organic nanocomposites and hybrids allow for the modification of physical properties and the addition of new features in polymer-based systems, and thus have received great interest. For example, the addition of a higher refractive index inorganic species into an organic polymer allows for the increase of the refractive index of the final material beyond that of the indices reached with polymers alone. Most nanocomposites, however, commonly suffer from absorption and/or scattering losses due to the nature and size of the inorganic species – in strong contrast to molecular hybrids, as we demonstrate here. We focus on the use of titanium oxide hydrates, which we show are highly versatile inorganic ‘fillers’ for polymer-based hybrids. Titanium oxide hydrates are typically used as precursors for crystalline TiO2, exploited in a wide range of applications due to its moderate price, biocompatibility and, depending on the crystal structure, efficient photo-catalytic properties. Beneficially, using the hydrate rather than its fully crystalline form allows for the creation of versatile, low-temperature, sol-gel processed hybrids. We show that these hydrates increase the refractive index of the hybrid material with no or minimal optical loss – i.e. they are fully transparent. Using organic species that contain several hydroxyl moieties have, thereby, a stabilizing effect on the titanium oxide hydrates. Such ‘matrices’ can also create an oxygen barrier to the Ti-species. This oxygen barrier is advantageous for inducing a strong photo-catalytic response of such hybrid films via the reduction of Ti(IV) to Ti(III) while the re-oxidation of Ti(III) in air is limited. The high transparency in the visible and near- infrared range could also prove useful for producing low-loss photonic structures to aid and improve light management. Because of the solution-processability of the hybrids, such light-management structures promise to be readily implemented in devices such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic photovoltaics (OPVs), providing pathways to increase their overall performance, device efficiency and, potentially, long term stability.
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