Changes in physical properties and molecular structure of polystyrene nanospheres exposed with daily solar flux

Author

Wibawa, Pratama Jujur ; Agam, Mohd Arif ; Nur, Hadi ; Saim, Hashim

fYear

2010

fDate

1-3 Dec. 2010

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

1

Abstract

The effects of physical properties and molecular structure of 200 nm polystyrene nanospheres (PSN) coated on silicon wafer exposed with daily solar flux were explored by field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) and attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FT-IR) spectrometer. It is revealed that the particles shape of PSN changed from spheric to eight-shaped after solar radiation. Reduction of the size as much as 29.5% after 5 minutes exposure was also observed in PSN particles. Changes in the molecular structure of the PSN particles after solar radiation were observed where some of the phenyl moieties of polystyrene broke down to facilitate carbon-carbon cross linkage bonds. These results demonstrated that the shrinkage of PSN particles is caused by the change of the molecular structure of polystyrene.

Keywords

Fourier transform spectra; attenuated total reflection; field emission electron microscopy; infrared spectra; nanoparticles; particle size; polymers; scanning electron microscopy; shrinkage; solar radiation; Si; attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectrometer; carbon-carbon cross linkage bonds; daily solar flux; eight-shaped particles; field emission scanning electron microscope; molecular structure; phenyl moieties; physical properties; polystyrene nanospheres; shrinkage; silicon wafer; size 200 nm; spheric shape particles; time 5 min;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Enabling Science and Nanotechnology (ESciNano), 2010 International Conference on

Conference_Location

Kuala Lumpur

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-8853-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ESCINANO.2010.5701028

Filename

5701028