4.7 Article

The Effect of Femtosecond Laser Irradiation and Plasmon Field on the Degree of Conversion of a UDMA-TEGDMA Copolymer Nanocomposite Doped with Gold Nanorods

Journal

Publisher

MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/ijms232113575

Keywords

nanocomposite; UDMA; plasmonics; femtosecond laser; nanorod

Funding

  1. Nanoplasmonic Laser Fusion Research Laboratory project - National Research and Innovation Office [NKFIH-468-3/2021, 2022-2.1.1NL-2022-00002]
  2. Eotvos Lorand Research Network (ELKH), Hungary
  3. National Research, Development, and Innovation Fund of Hungary [TKP2021-EGA-02]
  4. European Union
  5. European Social Fund
  6. National Research, Development and Innovation Fund of Hungary [2018-1.2.1-NKP2018-00012]
  7. Hungarian Academy of Engineering
  8. MICHELBERGER MESTERDIJ Scholarship
  9. [VEKOP-2.3.2-16-2016-00011]

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This work investigates the effects of femtosecond laser irradiation and doping with plasmonic gold nanorods on the conversion degree of a urethane dimethacrylate-triethylene glycol dimethacrylate nanocomposite. It is found that the presence of gold nanorods alone can increase the conversion degree of the photopolymer. The combination of femtosecond laser impulses and nanorod doping shows the best results.
In this work, the effects of femtosecond laser irradiation and doping with plasmonic gold nanorods on the degree of conversion (DC) of a urethane dimethacrylate (UDMA)-triethylene glycol dimethacrylate (TEGDMA) nanocomposite were investigated. The UDMA-TEGDMA photopolymer was prepared in a 3:1 weight ratio and doped with dodecanethiol- (DDT) capped gold nanorods of 25 x 75 or 25 x 85 nm nominal diameter and length. It was found that the presence of the gold nanorods alone (without direct plasmonic excitation) can increase the DC of the photopolymer by 6-15%. This increase was found to be similar to what could be achieved with a control heat treatment of 30 min at 180 degrees C. It was also shown that femtosecond laser impulses (795 nm, 5 mJ pulse energy, 50 fs pulse length, 2.83 Jcm(-2) fluence), applied after the photopolymerization under a standard dental curing lamp, can cause a 2-7% increase in the DC of undoped samples, even after thermal pre-treatment. The best DC values (12-15% increase) were obtained with combined nanorod doping and subsequent laser irradiation close to the plasmon resonance peak of the nanorods (760-800 nm), which proves that the excited plasmon field can directly facilitate double bond breakage (without thermoplasmonic effects due to the short pulse length) and increase the crosslink density independently from the initial photopolymerization process.

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