About the project
The PhotoFluo project consists in a consortium of three teams (two from Europe and one from Canada) committed to work for developing novel fluoropolymers suitable for optical and electronic devices, membranes, microfluidics, and biomaterials.
This ambitious goal will be achieved starting from designing new perfluoropolyalkylether building blocks (PFPAE) improving safety (not bioaccumulative like perfluoroalkylics) and having chemical inertness, flexibility in a wide temperature range, very low refractive index and wettability.
PFPAEs will be chain extended with Rh blocks to tune final properties; exploiting OH functionalities, these precursors will be functionalized with photoreactive groups G to make telechelic macromonomers for suitable crosslinking (via both radical and ionic processes).
The polymers will be synthesized by photoinduced polymerization, chosen as an efficient and eco-friendly process: the polymer formation is fast (no more than minutes compared to hours requested by thermal processes), is solvent free, is carried out at room temperature consuming low amount of energy, permits spatial resolution, as it mainly occurs in the illuminated areas. After obtaining an original portfolio of PFPAE polymers, they will be fully characterized and tested in view of innovate applications.
The main PFPAE structures synthesized during the project are listed here 
(570.09 kB).
The contribution to the project of each partner Institution is the following:
TWU focuses on the synthesis of novel PFPAE building blocks and their functionalization for specific applications
ENSCM is mainly involved in the photopolymerization processes of fluorinated radical systems
POLITO deals with photopolymerization processes of fluorinated cationic systems and the characterization of the cured polymers.