UV-cured transparent magnetic polymer nanocomposites

Magnetite nanoparticles are synthesized by thermal decomposition of Fe(acac)3 and subsequently coated with a silica shell exploiting a water-in-oil synthetic procedure. The as-produced nanopowder is mixed with a photocurable hyperbranched resin and the polymerization process is studied by means of realtime FTIR (RT-FTIR). Owing to the presence of the silica shell, the photocuring ability of the systems containing coreeshell structures is highly improved compared with that of the formulations filled with bare magnetite nanoparticles, allowing the efficient polymerization of a 100 mm-thick film loaded with an unprecedented 8 vol% of magnetic filler