Effects of the temperature on size and quality of monodisperse PMMA nanospheres

In this work, suspension polymerization is used to fabricate monodisperse polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) nanospheres with different diameters. The effect of the reaction temperature on the size and quality of the nanospheres is investigated. Then, in order to study the optical property of the prepared nanospheres, vertical deposition via evaporation induced self-assembly method is applied to grow artificial opal photonic crystals. Furthermore, the size and the polydispersity index (PDI) of the nanospheres and UV-visible absorption spectra of the opals are compared. It is shown that the concentration of the polymerization initiator and reaction temperature play key roles in specifying the size of the polymer nanospheres and also in their quality.

Keywords:

Colloidal Crystals , Suspension polymerization , Monodisperse PMMA nanospheres.