Strong, flexible,
and transparent materials have garnered tremendous
interest in recent years as materials and electronics manufacturers
pursue devices that are bright, flexible, durable, tailorable, and
lightweight. Depending on the starting components, polymers fabricated
using thiol–yne chemistry have been shown to be exceptionally
strong and/or flexible, while also being amenable to modification
by the incorporation of nanoparticles. In the present work, novel
ligands were synthesized and used to functionalize quantum dots (QDs)
of various diameters. The functionalized QDs were then incorporated
into thiol–yne prepolymer matrices. These matrices were subsequently
polymerized to form QD thiol–yne nanocomposite polymers. To
demonstrate the versatility of the fabrication process, the prepolymers
were either thermally cured or photopolymerized. The resulting transparent
nanocomposites expressed the size-specific color of the QDs within
them when exposed to ultraviolet irradiation, demonstrating that QDs
can be incorporated into thiol–yne polymers without significantly
altering QD expression. With the inclusion of QDs, thiol–yne
nanocomposite polymers are promising candidates for use in numerous
applications including as device display materials, optical lens materials,
and/or sensor materials.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.