Browsing by Subject "Polysiloxanes"

Polysiloxanes are silicon-based polymers consisting of R2SiO repeating units. They are commonly used in many commercial applications, for example, as adhesives, additives, or waterproof coatings. This thesis concentrates on polysiloxanes used as optically clear adhesives, which are needed in display applications to, for instance, bond cover lenses to touch panel sensors. This kind of a material needs to have a high refractive index to match glass or plastic, and it has to be transparent and thermally stable. In addition, it must resist degradation and yellowing from UV exposure and humidity. Anionic ring-opening polymerization was used to synthesize optically transparent polysiloxanes with varying side-groups. These polymers exhibited high refractive index values, which were adjusted by changing the amount of phenyl group -containing monomers or with chain terminating agents. End-functionalization reactions were performed for the synthesized polymers to introduce methacrylate groups to the chain ends, which could later be used in crosslinking trials involving a photoinitiator. The results present an effective synthetic route for the ring-opening polymerization for transparent, high refractive index poly(dimethylsiloxane-co-diphenylsiloxane) and poly(methylphenylsiloxane) that could be used as adhesives after selective chain end functionalization and crosslinking reactions. The properties of the synthesized polysiloxanes were characterized with several different methods, such as size exclusion chromatography, rheology, and NMR spectroscopy. End functionalization reactions were performed for some of the synthesized polymers. These were then further characterized to verify the suitability of the reaction.