Enhancement of Electric Conductivity in Transparent Glasse—Ceramic Nanocomposites of Bi_2O_3—BaTiO_3 Glasses

The frequency and temperature dependent electrical conductivity measurements for heat-treated binary glass system with composition of （lO0-x）Bi203-xBaTi03 （x = 20, 30, 40 and 50, in mol%） were carried out. The glass was prepared by melt quenching technique and their corresponding glass-ceramic nanocomposites were obtained by suitable heat treatment. Nanostructured behavior and electrical properties of these glasses and their corresponding glass-ceramic nanocomposites were studied. X-ray diffraction （XRD） and differential scanning calorimetry confirmed the amorphous nature of the glasses. Moreover, XRD patterns of the samples indicate nanocrystallites embedded in the glass matrix. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy （FT-IR） spectral analysis showed that the band positions of glass system are within the wave number range of Bi06, Bi03 and Ti06 structural units. It is observed that the electrical conductivity is enhanced by 102-103 times in the transparent glass-ceramic nanocomposite phase. With further heat treatment, the conductivity decreased considerably in the stage of glass-ceramic nanocomposite phase as compared with the glassy phase sample. Therefore, partially devitrified phase is more suitable as cathode material in secondary batteries compared to its vitreous or fully crystalline counterpart. The conduction mechanism was confirmed to obey the adiabatic small polaron hopping （SPH）. AC conductivity measurements were performed as a function of temperature and frequency, showing a very slow increasing rate at low temperatures and then a fast rate at higher temperatures.

Transparent flexible ZnO/MWCNTs/PBMA ternary nanocomposite film with enhanced mechanical properties

Functional organic-inorganic nanocomposites with high transparency show significant potential application in many fields. However, it is still a great challenge to prepare flexible transparent nanocomposites due to the intrinsic stiffness of the nanoparticles and the poor interaction between nanopartieles and organic matrices. In this work, a transparent ternary nanocomposite film with enhanced mechanical performance is fabricated by two-steps. First, the transparent ternary ZnO/MWCNTs/n-butyl methacrylate （BMA） nanodispersion is prepared by mixing the ZnO/BMA and MWCNTs/BMA dispersions directly. Then, the ternary nanocoposites film is fabricated via in-situ bulk polymerization of the above nanodispersions. As a result, the tensile strength of the ZnO/MWCNTs/poly-n-butyl methacrylate （PBMA） ternary film is enhanced by 42% and the elongation at break is three times that of ZnO/PBMA nanocomposite. The hardness of the film increases from 5B to 1H with 40 wt% ZnO. These results indicate that ZnO and MWCNTs can improve the mechanical properties of the composite significantly. Importantly, the ternary nanocomposite film still remains high transparency and exhibit excellent UV-shielding performance. The as-prepared transparent multifunctional nanocomposite films have promising applications in optical materials and devices, such as optical filters, contact lenses and protection packing.

Transparent h-BN/polyacrylamide nanocomposite hydrogels with enhanced mechanical properties

In this study, a facile way has been proposed to prepare transparent, tough and flexible polyacrylamide （PAM） hydrogels which is composed of a dually crosslinked single network by chemical crosslinking of N,N＇-methylenebisacrylamide （BIS） and physical crosslinking of hydrophilic hexagonal boron nitride （h- BN） nanosheets. The resulting h-BN/PAM nanocomposite hydrogels are highly transparent, and exhibit significantly enhanced mechanical properties compared to the dark （GO）/PAM nanocomposite hydrogels or chemical crosslinking PAM hydrogels. Thus it opens up new opportunities for developing next- generation transparent, tough and flexible hydrogels that hold great promise in such important applications as light responsive soft robot and liquid microlenses.