Vanadium and tungsten based hybrid materials

Lise Meitner Position M 595 Vanadium and tungsten based hybrid materials Silvia GROSS 09.10.2000 In recent years, a great amount of scientific and technological interest has been devoted to design and to synthesize organic-inorganic hybrid materials since they promise to match all the characteristics of organic polymers with the advantages of inorganic compounds. The approach followed in this proposal is to graft inorganic nanoparticles to the skeleton of organic polymers by copolymerization of suitable organic monomers with inorganic oxide clusters bearing polymerizable functional groups. The clusters may be convenientely prepared by the sol-gel process. This approach has been successfully applied to polyolefins cross-linked by oxozirconium, clusters. The aim of the proposal is to extend this investigation to other transition metals. Variation of the inorganic part of the hybrid polymers is an additional option to modify the properties of the hybrid polymers and additionally allows to introduce properties characteristic for the respective oxide (e.g, special optical and dielectric properties). The focus will be on vanadium and tungsten derivatives. The first task is to prepare V and W oxometallate clusters functionalized with polymerizable organic moieties; such derivatives are currently not known. The main route will be an in-situ modification by addition of suitable ligands to sol-gel reactions of the corresponding alkoxides. The functionalized clusters will be used as in organic units in hybrid materials. The obtained hybrid polymers will be characterized in detail from a compositional, structural and functional point of view.