Improved Mechanical, Anti-UV Irradiation, and Imparted Luminescence Properties of Cyanate Ester Resin/Unzipped Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes/Europium Nanocomposites

Abstract

Cyanate ester resin (CER) is an excellent thermal stable polymer. However, its mechanical properties are not appropriate for its application, with brittle weakness, and it has poor functional properties, such as luminescence. This work innovatively combines the luminescence property and the improved mechanical properties with the inherent thermal property of cyanate ester. A novel nanocomposite, CER/uMWCNTs/Eu, with multi-functional properties, has been prepared. The results show that with the addition of 0.1 wt.% of uMWCNTs to the resin, the flexural strength and tensile strength increased 59.3% and 49.3%, respectively. As the curing process of the CER progresses, the injected luminescence signal becomes luminescence behind the visible (FBV). The luminescence intensity of CER/uMWCNTs/Eu was much stronger than that of CER/MWCNTs/Eu, and the luminescence lifetime of CER/MWCNTs/Eu and CER/uMWCNTs/Eu was 8.61 μs and 186.39 μs, respectively. FBV exhibited great potential in the embedment of photon quantum information. Therefore, it can be predicted that CER/uMWCNTs/Eu composites will not only have a wide range of applications in sensing, detection, and other aspects, but will also exhibit great potential in the embedding of photon quantum information.

The Created Excellent Thermal, Mechanical and Fluorescent Properties by Doping Eu3+-Complex-Anchored Carbon Nanotubes in Polycyanate Resins

“…We have chosen ETP because it produces high fluorescence and quantum yield [12], and forms two ligands, 1,10-phenanthroline (Phen) and 2-acyltrifluoroacetone (TTA), [Eu(TTA) 3 Phen] (ETP), and emits red fluorescence due to the f-f transition of 4f electrons in Eu 3+ [13]. In the previous work [14], we first prepared nanoparticles from ETP-anchored uMWCNTs, and then doped the nanoparticles with dicyanate of bisphenol A monomer (CER-A monomer) to prepare CER-A nanocomposites, endowed with mechanical properties and fluorescence properties of CER nanocomposites. However, the fluorescent intensity was weak, caused by the background fluorescence (430 nm) suppressed ETP (612 nm), the nanocomposites do not emit characteristic red fluorescence under excitation and the mechanical properties were lower within the limit range of low concentrations (0.01 wt.%).…”