Thermal, mechanical, and morphological properties of phenolic resin/silica hybrid ceramers

Study on Properties of Heat-Resistant Hybrid Resin Containing Silicon and Composites

In recent years, one kind of novel hybrid polymer containing silicon has already been reported in the field of high-temperature resistance polymer. Gradually, it has been a research hotspot in the field of high-performance matrix resins because of excellent heat resistance and dielectric properties. The composite was prepared by M-aminophenylacetylene terminated polymethyldiphenylethynyl silane (MDPES-2) as a matrix and nonalkali glass cloth as reinforced material using a hot press process. The cure reaction of MDPES-2 was characterized. Meanwhile, heat resistance, mechanical properties, and dielectric properties of MDPES-2 composites were systematically studied in this paper. The results showed that flexural strength at room temperature is 321 MPa and flexural strength retention at 240°C was 98.3%. Flexural strength retention after thermal treatment at 500°C for 7 min was 84%. In addition, $\epsilon$ and dielectric dissipation factor ( $\tan \delta$ ) were 3.9 and $2.0\times {10}^{-3}$ (10 GHz).

General Method for the Synthesis of Hollow Mesoporous Carbon Spheres with Tunable Textural Properties

A versatile synthetic procedure to prepare hollow mesoporous carbon spheres (HMCS) is presented here. This approach is based on the deposition of a homogeneous hybrid polymer/silica composite shell on the outer surface of silica spheres through the surfactant-assisted simultaneous polycondensation of silica and polymer precursors in a colloidal suspension. Such composite materials can be further processed to give hollow mesoporous carbon spheres. The flexibility of this method allows for independent control of the morphological (i.e., core diameter and shell thickness) and textural features of the carbon spheres. In particular, it is demonstrated that the size of the pores within the mesoporous shell can be precisely tailored over an extended range (2-20 nm) by simply adjusting the reaction conditions. In a similar fashion, also the specific carbon surface area as well as the total shell porosity can be tuned. Most importantly, the textural features can be adjusted without affecting the dimension or the morphology of the spheres. The possibility to directly modify the shell textural properties by varying the synthetic parameters in a scalable process represents a distinct asset over the multistep hard-templating (nanocasting) routes. As an exemplary application, Pt nanoparticles were encapsulated in the mesoporous shell of HMCS. The resulting Pt@HMCS catalyst showed an enhanced stability during the oxygen reduction reaction, one of the most important reactions in electrocatalysis. This new synthetic procedure could allow the expansion, perhaps even beyond the lab-scale, of advanced carbon nanostructured supports for applications in catalysis.

Hybrids of colloidal silica and waterborne polyurethane

Waterborne polyurethane (WPU) was synthesized and followed by adding colloidal silica to prepare WPU-silica hybrids. The silica content in the hybrid thin films was varied from 0 to 50 wt%. The experimental results revealed that the viscosity of these hybrid solutions increased with increasing silica content and resulted in the aggregation of silica particle in the hybrid films. The latter result was evidenced by SEM examination. The effect of interaction between silica particle and urethane polymer chains is more significant with increasing silica content. The prepared hybrid films show much better thermal stability and mechanical properties than pure WPU. The optical transparence did not linearly decrease with increasing the silica fraction in the hybrid thin film. At below 20% silica content, the film transparence decreased with increasing silica content; the converse is true at above 20% silica content. These results showed that the prepared hybrid films demonstrated tunable transparence with the silica fraction in the films.