0000000000385769
AUTHOR
Cesare Benedetti
Colloidally Confined Crystallization of Highly Efficient Ammonium Phosphomolybdate Catalysts
Nanodroplets in inverse miniemulsions provide a colloidal confinement for the crystallization of ammonium phosphomolybdate (APM), influencing the resulting particle size. The effects of the space confinement are investigated by comparing the crystallization of analogous materials both in miniemulsion and in bulk solution. Both routes result in particles with a rhombododecahedral morphology, but the ones produced in miniemulsion have sizes between 40 and 90 nm, 3 orders of magnitude smaller than the ones obtained in bulk solution. The catalytic activity of the materials is studied by taking the epoxidation of cis-cyclooctene as a model reaction. The miniemulsion route yields APM particles ca…
Zirconium oxocluster/polymer hybrid nanoparticles prepared by photoactivated miniemulsion copolymerization
The photoactivated free radical miniemulsion copolymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) and the zirconium oxocluster Zr4O2(methacrylate) 12 is used as an effective and fast preparation method for polymer/inorganic hybrid nanoparticles. The oxoclusters, covalently anchored to the polymer network, act as metal-organic cross-linkers, thus improving the thermomechanical properties of the resulting hybrid nanoparticles. Benzoin carbonyl organic compounds were used as photoinitiators. The obtained materials are compared in terms of cross-linking, effectiveness of cluster incorporation, and size distribution with the analogous nanoparticles produced by using conventional thermally induced free …