A Novel Route to Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Nanomaterials

The in situ formation of functionalized silica nanoparticles is reported. The reactive stabilizers used in the study, [3-(2-bromoisobutyryl)propyl]triethoxysilane and [3-(2-bromoisobutyryl)propyl]ethoxydimethylsilane, have an atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) initiator at the noncondensable end. Condensation with tetraethoxysilane yields silica nanoparticles with a surface-immobilized initiator. The size of these functionalized silica nanoparticles can be controlled by varying the time of initiator addition and initiator concentration. The silica particle sizes ranged from 10 to 300 nm. With the initiator functionalized silica nanoparticles, ATRP synthesis was performed with styrene, tert-butyl acrylate, and methyl acrylate to produce organic-inorganic nanomaterials.