New inorganic cluster-reinforced polymers

In recent years there has been considerable interest in the preparation of organic-inorganic hybrid materials to achieve a synergetic combination of the properties typical of each of the constituents and to allow a deliberate tailoring of properties between purely inorganic and purely organic materials. In the host institute, pre-formed metal oxide clusters having suitable organic groups bonded to their surface are used to prepare inorganic cluster- reinforced polymers. Until present only radical polymerizations were employed, which means that the reactive organic groups attached to the surface of the Organically Modified Transition-Metal Oxide Clusters (OMTOC) were polymerizable double bonds (for free radical polymerizations) or bromo-substituted groups (for atom transfer radical polymerizations). Clusters with functional organic groups that allow other polymerization techniques, have not yet been investigated but offer tremendous possibilities for materials syntheses. The aim of this project is to introduce different co-monomers as organic polymerizable constituents into inorganic/organic hybrid materials, and investigate the properties of the new material systems, which are obtained by other polymerization techniques than the ones used so far. Therefore the aim of the work contains the preparation of OMTOC with new organic functionalities, the preparation of cluster-crosslinked polymers by different polymerization techniques using the new clusters, monitoring the crosslinking processes and investigation of the structure of the new cluster-crosslinked polymers. The combination of oxo-cluster with different organic functional ligands on their surface with different organic co- monomers and other polymerization techniques than radical polymerizations will allow the preparation of interesting new types of inorganic-organic hybrid polymers.