Successful Entrapment of Carbon Dots within Flexible Free-Standing Transparent Mesoporous Organic-Inorganic Silica Hybrid Films for Photonic Applications

Abstract: The effective entrapment of Carbon dots (CDs) into a polymer-silica hybrid matrix, formed as free standing transparent flexible films, is presented. CDs of 3 nm mean size with strong photoluminescence are embedded into a silica matrix during the sol-gel procedure, using tetraethylorthosilicate and F127 triblock copolymer as the structure directing agent under acidic conditions. The final hybrid nanostructure forms free standing transparent films that show high flexibility and long term stable CDs luminescence indicating the protective character of the hybrid matrix. It is crucial that the photoluminescence of the hybrid's CDs is not seriously affected after thermal treatment at 550C for 30min. Moreover, the herein reported hybrid is demonstrated to be suitable for the fabrication of advanced photonic structures using soft lithography process due to its low shrinkage and distortion upon drying.