Al2O3/SnO2 Co-Nanoparticle Modified Grafted Collagen for Improving Thermal Stability and Infrared Emissivity

Al₂O₃/SnO₂ co‐nanoparticles were prepared with a modified sol‐gel technique followed by a thermal treatment process. With these co‐nanoparticles the grafted collagen‐Al₂O₃/SnO₂ nanocomposites were obtained using a supersonic dispersion method. X‐ray diffraction, FT‐IR analysis, transmission electron microscopy, TGA/DTA and infrared emissivity test were performed to characterize the resulting nanoparticles and nanocomposites, respectively. The Al₂O₃/SnO₂ co‐nanoparticles showed a narrow distribution of size between 20–40 nm and could be uniformly absorbed on the tri‐helix scaffolds of the grafted collagen without any aggregation. The nanocomposites possessed better thermal stability and substantially lower infrared emissivity than the grafted collagen and Al₂O₃/SnO₂ co‐nanoparticles with an increase of degradation temperature from 39 to 210 °C and a decrease of infrared emissivity from 0.850 of the grafted collagen and 0.708 of the Al₂O₃/SnO₂ co‐nanoparticles to 0.424, which provided a potential application of the nanocomposites to areas such as photoelectronics.