Successful Entrapment of Carbon Dots within Flexible Free-Standing Transparent Mesoporous Organic-Inorganic Silica Hybrid Films for Photonic Applications

摘要

The effective entrapment of Carbon dots (CDs) into a polymer-silica hybridmatrix, formed as free standing transparent flexible films, is presented. CDsof 3 nm mean size with strong photoluminescence are embedded into a silicamatrix during the sol-gel procedure, using tetraethylorthosilicate and F127triblock copolymer as the structure directing agent under acidic conditions.The final hybrid nanostructure forms free standing transparent films that showhigh flexibility and long term stable CDs luminescence indicating theprotective character of the hybrid matrix. It is crucial that thephotoluminescence of the hybrid's CDs is not seriously affected after thermaltreatment at 550C for 30min. Moreover, the herein reported hybrid isdemonstrated to be suitable for the fabrication of advanced photonic structuresusing soft lithography process due to its low shrinkage and distortion upondrying.