Synthesis and characterization of organic-inorganic polymers from new methacrylate monomers and silane derivatives

ABSTRACT We report the synthesis of five new hybrid polymeric structures obtained by free radical copolymerization of some organic azo-based methacrylate m onomers and 3-methacryloxypropyl trim ethoxysilane (MEMO). The copolymers are soluble in common solvents like methylene chloride, chloroform, dichlorbenzene, dimethylsulfoxide, dimethylformamide. The copolymeric structures might be interesting from the point of view of nonlinear optical response due to a rich content in chromophoric units determined by H-NMR spectroscopy. The structures were also characterized by FT-IR spectrosc opy, TGA and SEC analysis. Keywords : azobenzene, MEMO, hybrid, methacr ylate monomers, NLO, copolymers. 1. INTRODUCTION During the last two decades, material s such as chemically or physically modified PMMA matrix with organic dyes were investigated for their SHG /THG nonlinear optical response 1-5 . The "classic" PMMA matrix alone proved not to be a very good media for chromophores, allowing a fast relaxation of the oriented dipoles after removing the electric field