Desarrollo de métodos sintéticos basados en química click para la preparación de materiales avanzados grafeno-polímero

Abstract

The field of polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) has evolved significantly in the last years, mainly as a consequence of the isolation of individual layer in graphene, one of the best candidates as filler so far. PNCs represent an alternative to conventional composite materials since they achieve specific properties suited to the application by tailoring the composition. Due to their promising performances they have attracted the attention of a growing number of scientifics as well as the industrial community. Graphene’s remarkable properties make it an attractive material for use in polymer composites. Its dispersion in commodity polymers will deliver consumer products with improved mechanical, thermal and electrical properties. In fact it is already used in light-weight stiff materials, food packaging and conductive coatings. On the other hand, graphene has high electron mobility and large specific area making it a competite alternative as electron acceptor material in photovoltaic applications. Functionalization of conductive polymers with graphene offers the possibility of developing novel materials with particular optoelectronic properties. Objectives The aim of this thesis is to develop graphene-based polymer nanocomposites, using both conventional and conjugated polymers. The unifying thread of this study is to use different click chemistry based strategies to achieve good compatibility between the components of each nanocomposite, and consequently, an improvement in material’s properties. In particular, of this type of rections, the copper catalyzed azide−alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) has been the most employed for the modification of graphene. On the other hand, while other click strategies such as thiyl−radical approaches (thiol−ene and thiol−yne) have been widely used with polymers, these are in their early stages of implementation with graphene, and the initial results in this work look highly promising...