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Filled Polysilsesquioxanes: A New Approach to Chemical Sensing
Author(s) -
Castaldo Anna,
Massera Ettore,
Quercia Luigi,
Di Francia Girolamo
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
macromolecular symposia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.257
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1521-3900
pISSN - 1022-1360
DOI - 10.1002/masy.200750140
Subject(s) - materials science , composite material , polymer , silicon , graphite , relative humidity , amphiphile , nanometre , porosity , nanotechnology , optoelectronics , copolymer , physics , thermodynamics
Summary : In an attempt to investigate new polymeric materials as constituents of an e‐nose we focus our attention on a new emerging class of versatile three‐dimensional polyhedral silicon polymers, called polysilsesquioxanes, containing nanosized inorganic cages. Such hybrid amphiphilic materials offer exceptional opportunities to create composites with singular properties. In particular we found that the polyhedral organosilsesquioxane (POSS) cages covalently attached to the polymer backbone as side‐chain act as an “internal” filler with a nanometric homogeneous dispersion. We show how it is possible to fabricate sensing devices based on selected POSS matrix and, by a suitable choice of other “external” home‐made fillers, (e.g. graphite, copper, silicon, zinc and their alloys) obtained by mechanical milling the response of the resulting composites towards different classes of compounds can be tuned. In particular we fabricated a new high sensitive relative humidity device, exhibiting a fivefold response change for relative humidity changing in the range 0% to 100%. This behaviour can not be modelled on the basis of the matrix swelling operating mechanism. Rather, the combined effect of the matrix and the filler has to be invoked in order to explain the formation of nanopores inside the material that are responsible of the porous behavior of our sensors.