Hybrid thiol–ene network nanocomposites based on multi(meth)acrylate POSS

First, multi(meth)acrylate functionalized POSS monomers were synthesized in this paper. Secondly, FTIR was used to evaluate the homopolymerization behaviors of multi(meth)acrylate POSS and their copolymerization behaviors in the thiol–ene reactions with octa(3-mercaptopropyl) POSS in the presence of photoinitiator. Results showed that the photopolymerization rate of multimethacrylate POSS was faster than that of multiacrylate POSS. The FTIR results also showed that the copolymerizations were dominant in the thiol–ene reactions with octa(3-mercaptopropyl) POSS, different from traditional (meth)acrylate-thiol system, in which homopolymerizations were predominant. Finally, the resulted hybrid networks based on POSS were characterized by XRD, FE-SEM, DSC, and TGA. The characterization results showed that hybrid networks based on POSS were homogeneous and exhibited high thermal stability.