Photothermal Control over the Mechanical and Physical Properties of Polydimethylsiloxane

Though it is known that the photothermal effect of nanoparticles can be used to greatly increase the rate of polymer curing, at present, little is known about how the parameters of photothermal curing affect the desirable chemical and physical properties of the cured polymer. We report the swelling, gel fraction, and Young's modulus for the thermoset polydimethylsiloxane cured under a variety of photothermal and traditional conditions. We find that all of these properties can be tuned via the intensity of light and propose that the crosslink density within the thermoset decreases with increasing intensity of light during curing.