11920 | J. Mater. Chem. C, 2017, 5, 11920--11926 This journal is
©
The Royal Society of Chemistry 2017
Cite this: J. Mater. Chem. C, 2017,
5, 11920
MoS
2
nanosheets covalently functionalized with
polyacrylonitrile: synthesis and broadband laser
protection performance
Makai Shi,
a
Ningning Dong,
bc
Nan He,
a
Yan Wan,
d
Hongxia Cheng,
a
Mengru Han,
a
Jun Wang *
bc
and Yu Chen *
a
Highly soluble polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-covalently grafted MoS
2
nanosheets (MoS
2
–PAN) were synthesized
in situ through reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. In comparison
with MoS
2
and the MoS
2
/PAN blends, whether in solution or in a PMMA matrix, the MoS
2
–PAN-based
samples show superior optical limiting response in the visible and near-infrared ranges. After annealing
at 200 1CinN
2
for 4 hours, the annealed MoS
2
–PAN/PMMA film exhibits significantly enhanced
nonlinear optical and optical limiting responses when compared to the non-annealed MoS
2
–PAN/PMMA
film. The observed nonlinear coe fficients of the MoS
2
–PAN/PMMAfilmarechangedfrom1015cmGW
1
at
532 nm and 534 cm GW
1
at 1064 nm before annealing to 1151 cm GW
1
at532nmand699cmGW
1
at
1064 nm after annealing. The limiting thresholds were also decreased from 1.98 J cm
1
at 532 nm and
3.60 J cm
1
at 1064 nm before annealing to 1.56 J cm
1
at 532 nm and 2.67 J cm
1
at 1064 nm after
annealing.
Introduction
With the fast development of laser technology, lasers have been
more and more widely used in the military field. Some are
designed to destroy the missiles, unmanned planes, optoelectronic/
optical facilities and other targets, while others are used to
permanently disable humans by blinding. During the past few
decades, therefore, significant efforts have been made in the
design and preparation of state-of-the-art optical limiting (OL)
materials.
1–14
Some representative OL materials for laser protection,
including phthalocyanines, carbon-based nanomaterials, por-
phyrins, inorganic nanomaterials, mixed metal complexes, and
polymers, have been widely reported. To achieve simultaneous
protection against both pulsed and continuous wave (cw) or
quasi-cw lasers, the ideal OL materials, which can exhibit high
transmittance for low intensity light (e.g., ambient light and/or
natural light), while strongly attenuating intense laser beams,
should be designed for multimechanistic function (reverse
saturable absorption (RSA) behavior at the high-energy end of
the visible; two photon absorption (TPA) or multi-photon
absorption (MPA) behavior at the low-energy end of the visible;
and nonlinear scattering (NLS) behavior in the visible near-
infrared region).
As an encouraging broadband saturable absorber,
15
the
ultrafast nonlinear optical (NLO) performances of two-dimensional
molybdenum disulfide (MoS
2
) and its derivatives have attracted
significant attention.
6,15–21
By using the Z-scan technique with a
nanosecond pulsed laser, Dong et al. observed the OL effect of
MoS
2
nanosheets at both 532 and 1064 nm, with the OL
thresholds of 11.16 J cm
2
at 532 nm and 19 J cm
2
at
1064 nm.
16
The limiting mechanism for the former is assigned
to the combined effect of both NLS and saturable absorption
(SA), while the latter mainly corresponds to NSL. The few-layer
MoS
2
nanosheets doped into the poly(methylmethacrylate)
(PMMA) matrix were also found to exhibit low limiting differential
transmittance values of 2% and 3% at 532 and 1064 nm,
respectively.
17
Very recently, we used a ‘‘grafting from’’ approach
to synthesize highly soluble poly(N-vinylcarbazole) (PVK) chemically
modified MoS
2
nanosheets (MoS
2
-PVK).
6,18
This is the first example
of MoS
2
nanosheets covalently functionalized with a polymer. As
expected, both the solution of MoS
2
-PVK in DMF and the MoS
2
-PVK/
PMMA film show good OL responses when compared to MoS
2
and
MoS
2
/PVK blends. In this work, we used a similar method to
in situ synthesize new polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-covalently grafted
a
Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Institute of Applied Chemistry,
School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China University of Science
and Technology 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China.
E-mail: chentangyu@yahoo.com
b
Key Laboratory of Materials for High-Power Laser, Shanghai Institute of Optics
and Fine Mechanics, CAS, Shanghai 201800, China. E-mail: jwang@siom.ac.cn
c
State Key Laboratory of High Field Laser Physics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and
Fine Mechanics, CAS, Shanghai 201800, China
d
Beijing No. 13 Middle School, 27 Niuying Str., Xicheng District, Beijing 1 00009,
China
Received 26th August 2017,
Accepted 30th October 2017
DOI: 10.1039/c7tc03900j
rsc.li/materials-c
Journal of
Materials Chemistry C
PAPER