An Exploratory Microfluidic Approach to Photopolymerized Polymer-Inorganic Nanocomposite Films.

Nanoparticle (NP) dispersions are extensively used for the producing nanocomposite materials. Optimization of formulations of NP dispersions is a time- and labor-consuming process that can benefit from high-throughput preparation of composite materials, followed by studies of their structure-property relationships. This paper describes a microfluidic platform for producing photopolymerized films from NP-monomer dispersions. The platform enables rapid and reproducible preparation of films with varying compositions by tuning the flow rates of the monomer and NP-monomer mixtures, along with suppressed evaporation of volatile monomers, no need of an inert atmosphere, and the reduced exposure to potentially harmful monomers and NPs. This work paves the way for efficient studies of composition-dependent properties of nanocomposite materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]