This letter provides a brief summary on early work and developments on both controlling and studying the optical
properties of resonant metal nanoparticles and reports on all progress achieved since two years. Our approach is based on
controlled nanoscale photopolymerization triggered by local enhanced electromagnetic fields of silver nanoparticles
excited close to their dipolar plasmon resonance. By anisotropic polymerization, symmetry of the refractive index of the
surrounding medium was broken: C1v symmetry turned to C2v symmetry. This approach has overcome all the
difficulties faced by scanning probe methodologies to reproduce the form of the near field of the localized surface
plasmons and provides a new way to quantify its magnitude. Furthermore, this approach leads to the production of
polymer/metal hybrid nano-systems of new optical properties.
We present here a simple method to synthesize organic-dispersible colloids and a scenario for the ultra-fast
fabrication of silver/polymer nanocomposite by light-induced crosslinking polymerization. The objective of this
work was to apply UV-curing technology for the fabrication of nanocomposite materials containing silver
nanoparticles dispersed in a polymer binder. This new route allows processing operations to be simplified and
the properties of the final product to be improved. A special attention has been paid to the synthesis and
dispersion of metal nanoparticles in various monomers and oligomers and to the photopolymerization kinetics.
The silver nanoparticles were generated by reduction of AgNO3 with t-BuONa activated sodium hydride. Ag(0)
particles present a narrow size distribution with an average diameter of 6.5 nm. Transmission electron
microscopy (TEM) analysis has shown that Ag(0) nanoparticles are well dispersed in the acrylic resin. The
curing process was followed quantitatively by FTIR spectroscopy through the decrease upon UV exposure of the
IR bands characteristic of the functional groups. The silver nanoparticles have no detrimental effect on the
photopolymerization kinetics. The incorporation of metal nanoparticles was found to greatly reduce the gloss of
UV-cured coatings. Moreover, the outstanding optical and viscoelastic properties of these UV-cured
nanocomposites opens up interesting perspectives in various fields of applications (optics, nanoelectronic,
biology...).
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