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Molecular fillers for increasing the refractive index of polystyrene hybrids by chain assembly at polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane

Abstract

We developed a molecular filler based on polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) containing halogenated aromatic substituents to increase the refractive indices (RIs) of polystyrene (PS). PS hybrid films with a series of POSS derivatives were prepared through the solution method, and RI measurements were performed. Accordingly, it was revealed that these halogenated POSS fillers can increase the RI of the films. In particular, the degree of increase was larger than those estimated by theoretical prediction, suggesting that the accumulation of polymer chains around the POSS filler plays a key role in the increasing effect. In addition, it was shown that critical losses of thermal and mechanical properties were barely observed by adding POSS fillers. Preparation without the conventional sol‒gel method for the single-molecule-type filler with high-RI polymer hybrids based on chain assembly can be demonstrated.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Nakatani Foundation for Advancement of Measuring Technologies in biomedical engineering (for KT) and a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (JP17H03067) and (A) (JP17H01220), for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “New Polymeric Materials Based on Element-Blocks (No. 2401)” (JP24102013) and for Challenging Research (Pioneering) (JP18H05356).

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Correspondence to Kazuo Tanaka.

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Ueda, K., Tanaka, K. & Chujo, Y. Molecular fillers for increasing the refractive index of polystyrene hybrids by chain assembly at polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane. Polym J 52, 523–528 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-019-0302-4

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