A study on UV-curable polymer nanocomposite coatings

Abstract

Antireflective coating is a thin layer coating on the surface of a substrate to reduce the reflection. When the reflection is reduced, the transmission is increased and less light is lost. Antireflective coatings are widely used in display devices, photovoltaic devices and other optical systems. Currently antireflective coatings can be made by several types of materials, but polymer is the one with many advantages. To fabricate such an antireflective coating, current methods are time and energy consuming. And very few can be applied in industry for a large-scale manufacturing.

In this project, an antireflective coating of UV curable polymer/silica nanocomposite was proposed. The project served as an early stage study, which focused on the surface modification of silica particles, the dispersion of silica particles in polymer and the curing process of polymer/silica nanocomposite. By techniques of FTIR/FESEM/TEM/TGA/Photo DSC/UV-Vis spectroscopy, the result has shown that the surface modification of silica was successful. The degree of modification was studied by estimating the number of chains attached per unit area. The curing process of polymer might be accelerated by adding silica and the content of silica influenced the reaction rate. The dispersion state was also studied, and a higher content of silica resulted in a poorer dispersion.

For the future work, a better surface modification method is recommended to improve dispersion. In addition, to study the dispersion state, the cross-section of the coating can be observed under FESEM. Moreover, the content of filler can be increased for further study, if a better dispersion is available. Also, a quantitative study on curing kinetics can be conducted at different filler contents.