Hybrid Materials
Hybrid Materials are one of the focal areas of our research. We investiage Hybrid Materials which offer the possibility to combine materials with complementary properties in a synergistic manner. A key issue in the creation of hybrid materials is their phase behaviour. Often the individual constituents are not readily miscible and need carefully tuned surface modification in order to avoid macro phase separation. We investigate both top down and bottom up approaches for the synthesis of nanoscale hybrid materials: In the top down approaches prefabricated nanoparticles are surface modifies in order to improve their miscibility with a polymeric matrix material. In this context we investigate the surface functionalization of silica microgels with polymeric brushes. After successful functionalization the nanoparticles are mixed with block-copolymers and the phase behaviour of the resulting hybrid materials is studied. In the bottom up approaches, amphiphlic block-copolymers are used to template inorganic materials into well defined nanostructures. In this way both surface modification as well as nanostructuring are obtained in one step. Current research activities focus on the research of templated thin films containing TiO2 as the inorganic component. Special emphasis is put on the investigation of their phase diagram, in order to rationally control their morphogenesis. The thin films are then further investigated with respect to their photo physical properties.