Synthesis of inorganic hybrid Polymer/Titanium Dioxide via Sol-Gel Chemical Method

Abstract

Hybrid polymer is a hybrid between organic polymer and metal inorganic oxide. The dimension of dispersion of hybrids is much smaller than the composite materials. There are many potential applications of inorganic hybrid polymers such as thin-film semiconductor, transistors and solar cell because the interaction at the interface between polymers and inorganic materials, when polymers are donor and inorganic parts are acceptor. The synthesis of inorganic hybrid polymer of the titanium dioxide (TiO2) can be done in several ways, for example hydrothermal, surface treatment and sol-gel chemical method which differ in advantages and disadvantages such as size of particle, cost, electrical properties, procedures and morphology.

In this study, the inorganic hybrid polymers between polythiophene/TiO2 and polythiophene derivative/TiO2 were synthesized by a sol-gel chemical method. The optimum conditions are using TiO2 and calcined TiO2 as starting materials, HNO3 as oxidizing agent and calcined at 650oC for 3 h. From some preliminary results, according to infrared (IR) spectra, the characteristic vibrational signals of thiophene can be observed. Moreover, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns correspond to anatase TiO2 phase. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images indicated that the particles are in microscale size. Therefore, it can be confirmed that inorganic hybrid polymer between polythiophene and TiO2 can be synthesized by a sol-gel chemical method under the condition mentioned above.