A research group led by Professor Mikio Konno and Associate Professor Daisuke Nagao at Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University has successfully fabricated nanocomposite thin films with high refractive index (RI), which are not pyrolyzed at high temperatures below 400°C. The technique previously press-released on September 25 (also published in Polym. International, 60, 1180-1184 (2011)) was applied to the present fabrication of nanocomposite thin film.

 In applications to photoelectric devices such as flat panel displays, it is important to suppress scatterings and refractions at interfaces between different materials in the devices. Especially, for the multilayered device in which both high and low RI materials are employed, it is strongly required to decrease the index gap between the materials for efficient light extraction from the light source. Transparent polymer films incorporating nanoparticles with different contents were a promising candidate to decrease the index gap between adjacent layers.

 Since nanocomposite films can adjust RI with the content of nanoparticles homogeneously dispersed in polymer matrix, they are drawing attention as coordination layers to suppress the light loss at the interfaces. However, acrylic polymers employed as the matrix incorporating nanoparticles are pyrolyzed over 300°C in the device production process.

 From this background, the research group has produced nanocomposite transparent thin films with high thermal stability and RI index. Barium titanate nanoparticles as high RI materials were homogeneously incorporated into polyimide with thermal stability.

More information (Japanese)

[Contact]

Associate Professor Daisuke Nagao

Department of Materials Processing

Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University

Address: 6-6-7 Aoba Aramaki Aoba-ku Sendai, Miyagi, 980-8579, Japan

Tel: +81-22-795-7242, Fax: +81-22-795-7293

E-mail: nagao*mickey.che.tohoku.ac.jp (Replace * with @)