The Dispersion Study of TiO2 Nano-particles Modified by Surface Tailoring Coating of Pulsed RF Plasma Polymerization

Titania nanoparticle is one of the most studied transition metal oxide for various applications ranging from pigment, ultra violet light absorber, ultraviolet light or even visible light photo-catalyst, gas sensors etc. Combined with other polymers such as polytetraphathethylene, polyethylene, polyproplene, functional composite with some special performance can be formed. Because of the very high surface energy of the nanoparticles, they agglomerate severely and cannot be well dispersed in the background polymers. Therefore most of these composite applications have the problems of agglomeration and dispersion. That is the "bottleneck" in the formation of nanoparticle-polymer composite. Titania nanoparticle surface were modified by pulsed RF plasma polymerized coating. The ultra violet light absorbance of Titania-glycol solution were employed to express its dispersion behavior. It was found that the dispersion stability of coated Titania-glycol solution were improved. The particle size distribution was also observed to be narrowed towards the small particle size through the laser particle size analysis. The surface molecular structure was measured through some surface analysis tools such as XPS, FTIR and TOF-SIMS. The relationship of the dispersion with the surface structure and property were discussed. TG and DSC of the coated Titania nanoparticle were also used to measure their thermal stability.