Formation of surface-grafted copolymer brushes with continuous composition gradients

Abstract

We report on a simple methodology that facilitates the generation of surface-grafted assemblies comprising block copolymers with tunable composition and molecular weight gradients along flat solid substrates.

Formation of Hierarchically Structured Thin Films

“…[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] A range of strategies has been reported to prepare brushes with lateral chemical and topographical inhomogeneities, ranging from using initiator density gradients, [24][25][26] to creating mixed brushes by micro-and nanocontact printing. [27][28][29] However, most of these studies are limited to single step contact printing using a single initiator concentration.…”

Spatiotemporally Controlled Formation of Two‐Component Counterpropagating Lateral Graft Density Gradients of Mixed Polymer Brushes on Planar Au Surfaces

“…Therefore, extensive research has been dedicated to understanding the behavior of tethered polymer chains at interfaces. For instance, combinatorial approaches to surface-initiated polymerization through ATRP, have been used to probe the effects of graft density [7,20] and molecular weight [23,24] on polymer-brush surfaces. Recently, mixed or binary polymer brushes have been created by grafting two distinct polymers one after the other on the surface.…”

Surface-grafted block copolymer brushes with continuous composition gradients of poly(poly(ethylene glycol)-monomethacrylate) and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)

“…A single gradient material can easily reflect the variation of surface parameters such as molecular weight [21], chemical compositions [22], the number of functional groups [23,24], grafting density [25,26] and the nanostructures [27], which is of great help to significantly reduce the required sample numbers and improve the working efficiency. More recently, the SI-ATRP has been successfully employed in generating the surface gradients with very good controllability in terms of gradient composition, thickness, sharpness and properties [28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”