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Dye-doped polymer films of Poly(methyl methacrylate) PMMA have been prepared with the use of the conventional solution cast technique. Natural dye has been extracted from environmentally friendly material of green tea (GT) leaves. Obvious Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra for the GT extract were observed, showing absorption bands at 3401 cm −1 , 1628 cm −1 , and 1029 cm −1 , corresponding to O-H/N-H, C=O, and C-O groups, respectively. The shift and decrease in the intensity of the FTIR bands in the doped PMMA sample have been investigated to confirm the complex formation between the GT dye and PMMA polymer. Different types of electronic transition could be seen in the absorption spectra of the dye-doped samples. For the PMMA sample incorporated with 28 mL of GT dye, distinguishable intense peak around 670 nm appeared, which opens new frontiers in the green chemistry field that are particularly suitable for laser technology and optoelectronic applications. The main result of this study showed that the doping of the PMMA polymer with green tea dye exhibited a strong absorption peak around 670 nm in the visible range. The absorption edge was found to be shifted towards the lower photon energy for the doped samples. Optical dielectric loss and Tauc's model were used to estimate the optical band gaps of the samples and to specify the transition types between the valence band (VB) and conduction band (CB), respectively. A small band gap of around 2.6 eV for the dye-doped PMMA films was observed. From the scientific and engineering viewpoints, this topic has been found to be very important and relevant. The amorphous nature of the doped samples was found and ascribed to the increase of Urbach energy. The Urbach energy has been correlated to the analysis of X-ray diffraction (XRD) to display the structure-properties relationships.

Chitosan (CS) films doped with sodium triflate (NaTf) were prepared by the solution cast technique. The structural and morphological behaviors of the samples were examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. The XRD patterns were deconvoluted to estimate the degree of crystallinity of the samples. The SEM micrograph showed the crystalline structure of the sample contained 50 wt % of NaTf salt. The disappearance of broad peaks of chitosan at 2θ ≈ 21 • and 2θ ≈ 32 • confirmed the occurrence of ion association at 50 wt % of NaTf salt. In impedance plots, a low frequency spike region and a high frequency semicircle, were distinguishable for low salt concentrations. The highest ambient temperature direct current (DC) electrical conductivity obtained for CS:NaTf was found to be 2.41 × 10 −4 S/cm for the sample containing 40 wt % of NaTf salt. The role of lattice energy of salts on DC ionic conductivity was also discussed. The temperature dependence of DC conductivity was found to follow the well-known Arrhenius relationship. From the alternating current (AC) conductivity spectra, three distinct regions were recognized for the samples with NaTf salt concentration ranging from 10 wt % to 30 wt %. The plateau region of AC spectra was used to estimate the DC conductivity.

In this article, a novel approach is presented for the preparation of small band-gap polymer composites. The intensity of the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) peak increased from 0.64 to 3.2 for the chitosan-silver nitrate sample containing 1 wt % titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ). In the cases of 3 and 5 wt % added TiO 2 particles, the SPR peak disappeared. A wide shift of the absorption coefficient from 4.36 to 0.93 eV was observed. The smallest optical band gap of about 0.98 eV was achieved for the sample containing 3 wt % TiO 2 filler. The wide shift in the optical band gap was interpreted on the bases of the formation of metal-induced gap states between the metallic silver particles and the TiO 2 structure. A novel approach was achieved that was an alternative method to Tauc's semi-empirical model for band-gap estimation. The optical dielectric loss parameter for the band-gap study was easily calculated and analyzed, whereas it unfolded a deep knowledge from the physics point of view. The established quantum mechanical expression revealed a strong relationship between the energy band gap and the optical dielectric loss parameter. The scanning electron microscopy results show the leakage of white aggregated silver particles and distinguishable intense peaks of metallic silver particles between 3 and 3.3 keV appearing in the energy-dispersive X-ray spectrum.

In the present work, a novel method is exhibited for tuning the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) peaks of silver nanoparticles based on chitosan-Poly(vinyl alcohol) blend polymer nanocomposites. Silver nanoparticles were synthesized by in situ method through the chitosan host polymer. The absence of crystalline peaks of PVA in the blend system indicated the occurrence of miscibility between CS and PVA polymers. The UV–vis spectra of CS:AgNt samples shows SPR bands with weak intensity. Obvious tuning in SPR peaks of silver nanoparticles occurred when different amounts of PVA polymer incorporated to the CS:AgNt system. The appearance of distinguishable crystalline peaks of Ag° nanoparticles at 2θ = 38.6° and 2θ = 44.2° in the blend system reveals the role of polymer blending in the enhancement of SPR peaks of silver nanoparticles. Silver nanoparticles synthesized in this work with enhanced SPR peaks are important in various applications and areas such as optoelectronic devices. The TEM images show dispersed silver nanoparticles. The dielectric constant of PVA is higher than that of chitosan. The result of dielectric constant study validates the Mie model which reveals the fact that the dielectric constant of the surrounding material has a great effect on the SPR peak intensity of nanoparticles.

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