Development of aluminum-phosphate hybrid materials via sol-gel route for additive manufacturing of photonic materials

• Ano de defesa: 2023
• Autor(a) principal: Tayama, Gabriel Toshiaki
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp)
• Palavras-chave em Português: Three-dimensional printing; Photonics; Phosphates; Lanthanides; Optical properties
• Link de acesso: https://hdl.handle.net/11449/251198

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a technology with great potential for use in photonic applications because it overcomes the limitations of traditional manufacturing methods. Among the various AM techniques available, the vat-photopolymerization (VPP) is one of the few that meets the requirements for photonics manufacturing. However, one of the main challenges hindering the widespread adoption of VPP in optical device manufacturing is the limited availability of materials compatible with VPP techniques. The aim of this thesis was to develop, elucidate the structure of, fabricate via additive manufacturing, and study the optical properties of 3D printed parts of aluminum-phosphate hybrid materials. These materials were developed using the sol-gel route as candidates for the fabrication of active and passive photonic devices. These materials were additive manufactured via VPP using a custom-made AM system operating under intermittent exposure conditions. We developed a mathematical model describing the exposure profile output by this custom-made VPP setup, since its operating principle greatly differs from commercial platforms. Then, these new materials were 3D printed after characterizing their VPP parameters and photopolymerization kinetics. Lastly, we examined the optical homogeneity and anisotropy of additive manufactured elements from these materials. These goals were explored throughout five scientific publications, composing the five chapters of this thesis. In our first contribution, we synthesized photopolymerizable aluminum-phosphate sols, that were polymerized to result in organic-inorganic hybrid (OIH) materials composed by poly (2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) chains with aluminum-phosphate groups covalently bonded to the polymeric backbone. These inorganic units provide numerous crosslinkers, resulting in a highly interconnected and interlocked inorganic/organic structure. The OIH materials were optically transparent between the 420 nm - 1100 nm, however, these materials showed low transmittance in the near-infrared region (NIR) due to the high organic content of these matrices. In a second contribution, we modified the synthesis route to achieve aluminum-phosphate-silicate OIH materials with higher inorganic mass concentration and improved transmittance in the NIR. We investigated in-depth the structure of these materials by means of solid-state NMR and observed that the inorganic network is formed by aluminum-phosphate units interconnected by silicate chains. The chemical environment of the phosphate and aluminate sites could be tuned based on the aluminum to phosphorus ratio, allowing the structure to be tailored in order to enhance the lanthanide ions hosting ability of these materials. These structural features present these materials as potential candidates to immobilize lanthanide ions for developing active optical components. In a third contribution, we developed and tested a mathematical model describing the exposure profile outputted by the custom-built printer employed in this work, allowing us to model the laser-resin interaction in this equipment, and to correlate the printing parameters measured for our materials with those of commercial AM setups. Furthermore, we identified that this printing system can, theoretically, print faster compared to commercial platforms under specific conditions of beam diameter and overlap between pulses. In a fourth contribution, we explored the additive manufacturing of the aluminum-phosphate-silicate resins. The evolution of the 3D printing parameters of these materials (critical energy and penetration depth), and of the photopolymerization kinetics with light intensity and silicate concentration was studied. These results indicate the shift of critical conversion towards higher polymerization degree as the concentration of silicate increases, which was associated to a higher tendency towards cyclization. These results were employed to validate a photochemical model published in the literature describing the laser-resin interaction in VPP systems, elucidating the link between critical energy and photopolymerization kinetics. In our last contribution, we studied the refractive index distribution and the presence of optical anisotropies in 3D printed lines. We identified that the 3D printed parts are optically homogenous, despite the presence of a gradient of polymerization degree associated to the penetration of the laser into the resin and the beam profile. Optical anisotropies were identified, and polarized micro-Raman measurements indicate that the birefringence arises from the shear stress perpendicular to the scan direction due to the inflow of monomer towards the polymerization spot.