Premium
An All‐Inorganic Colloidal Nanocrystal Flexible Polarizer
Author(s) -
Zhang Simin,
Shi Wenxiong,
Siegler Timothy D.,
Gao Xiaoqing,
Ge Feng,
Korgel Brian A.,
He Yan,
Li Shuzhou,
Wang Xun
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.201902240
Subject(s) - materials science , polarizer , polymer , nanocrystal , anisotropy , birefringence , fabrication , quantum dot , rod , optoelectronics , nanotechnology , nanowire , spinning , polarization (electrochemistry) , optics , composite material , chemistry , medicine , physics , alternative medicine , pathology
Inorganic single crystals with anisotropic structures usually suffer from high brittleness and stiffness. Flexible polymers are used to replace inorganic crystals, but the hot‐stretching‐induced orientation process is tedious, and oriented molecular chains tend to revert to random coils during aging. To overcome these obstacles and using the similarities between sub‐1 nm nanowires (NWs) and linear polymers, we successfully fabricated anisotropic, transparent, flexible, and stable (ATFS) NW films with great potential for optical applications through a wet‐spinning method. The NW films show birefringence, and their birefractive index is higher than that of many polymers. They also showed polarized absorption of UV light and anisotropic scattering of visible light. The integrated films composed of NWs and quantum dots showed good fluorescence polarization. The tedious synthesis of quantum rods and fabrication of oriented polymer films can thus be avoided.