Inorganic Nanoparticle-Polymer Composites
A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Advanced Composites".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 November 2022) | Viewed by 1818
Special Issue Editor
Interests: functional nanomaterials; oxides; electron microscopy; electrical properties
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In recent years, the research and development of inorganic nanoparticles and polymer composites have attracted interest in many technological areas, with the aim of improving the properties of the functional materials. The most commonly used compounds include carbon allotropies or organic polymers, while metallic and semiconducting nanomaterials are usually used as the inorganic counterparts.
One of the most important factors is the fact that they can be easily manipulated using different shaping technologies (e.g., chemical deposition, spin-coating, 3D printing). Other factors include their light weight, low deposition cost at ambient conditions, solution-based manufacturability, excellent adhesion, and easy scalability. In this way, the current possibilities of functional nanomaterials can be expanded with great repercussions at an industrial level in a wide range of sectors including wind energy, electric vehicles, sensors, actuators, catalysis, and optoelectronics applications.
One of the problems preventing the use of nanomaterials is the usage of standard manufacturing processes based on sintering, pressing, and molding, which restricts the possible shapes and ultimately results in limitations in applications. Therefore, the search for new inorganic nanoparticle–polymer composites is a priority area of materials research. A good example of this is represented by semiconductor nanoparticles (SnO, SnO2, TiO2, Ga2O3, Cr2O3, NiO, and Si) used as inorganic counterparts, which are embedded into a conductive polymer (PEDOT:PSS) or graphene.
Moreover, not only the quality of the nanoparticles must be taken into account, but also the interface between the components of the device. It is therefore crucial to control the interface and develop efficient preparation methods without adding any additional costs. In this sense, the polymers can be deposited at room temperature without requiring special surface pre-treatments.
Thus, nanomaterial composites can be prepared with by alternative methods by using the soft chemical route (e.g., sol–gel methods, co-precipitation), which permits control of the dimensionality and particle size, exhaustive chemical composition, and microstructure, thus optimizing the final material properties.
Therefore, I invite all researchers in this field to contribute their latest results, as well as review the articles in the upcoming Special Issue, in order to aid the development of knowledge and application of inorganic nanoparticle–polymer composites in the future.
Prof. Dr. Julio Ramírez-Castellanos
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- inorganic nanoparticles
- composites
- organic polymer
- synthesis method
- physical properties
