Investigations on the organic crosslinking in ORMOCERs by means of Raman spectroscopy

FT-Raman spectroscopy was used together with supplementary C-13-NMR measure ments to analyze the reaction of the epoxy moieties of 3-glycidoxypropyltri methoxysilane and 5,6-epoxyhexyltrimethoxysilane during sol-gel processing. The corresponding reactions of the model compounds epoxypropane and epoxyh exane were analyzed to obtain the necessary Raman assignments of the result ing products. Based on these results the formation of the beta-hydroxy meth yl ethers could be derived for the silanes. An additional polyaddition of t he epoxy rings yielding a mixture of oligo ethers is also consistent with t he Raman measurements.