Nanostructured polystyrene-block-poly(4-vinyl pyridine)(pentadecylphenol) thin films as templates for polypyrrole synthesis

Abstract

Polypyrrole has been chemically synthesized on thin film nanostructures obtained from comb-shaped supramolecules of polystyrene-block-poly(4-vinyl pyridine) (PS-b-P4VP) hydrogen bonded with pentadecylphenol (PDP). PDP was washed from thin films of cylindrical and lamellar self-assembled combcopolymer systems, which resulted in removal of the upper layers of microdomains, leaving single cylindrical and lamellar layers covering a substrate, with P4VP segregated at the bottom as well as at the free air interface. This P4VP was complexed with Cu 2þ ions, after which chemical oxidation polymerization of pyrrole resulted in a thin polypyrrole layer covering the nanostructured block copolymer. The use of a catalytic amount of bipyrrole greatly improved the quality of the obtained product. The conductivity was measured to be w0.7 S cm À1 .

Disorder to Order Transition and Ordered Morphology of Coil-Comb Block Copolymer by Self-Consistent Field Theory

“…The ability of block copolymers to spontaneously form microphase-separated structures with length scales of 10–100 nm indeed makes them extensive applications in nanoscience, such as pore materials [1], drug delivery [2], and templates [3, 4]. Recently, researchers are devoted to design block copolymers with different architectures to engineer functional materials.…”

“…Coil-comb copolymers, which self-assemble at a length scale of a few nanometers, can be constructed by attaching oligomers or small molecules to polymers via covalent bond and noncovalent-bonding interactions, for example, hydrogen bonding, electrostatic interactions, or metal coordination [1, 3, 4, 10–27]. They have potential applications such as in electrical, biological, and other functional materials.…”

“…And they found its potential applications in templates and biological materials. Ten Brinke and co-workers [3, 4, 16–21, 26] reported a series of A- b -(B m  + 1 - g -C m ) coil-comb copolymers, where the small molecules C are weakly connected to backbone B through hydrogen bonds, and the coil-comb copolymers can self-assemble into hierarchically ordered structures. In these structures, there were two different length scales: the larger length scale period is mainly driven by the separation between the comb part and the coil part, whereas the small length period is produced by the segregation within the comb part.…”

Supramolecular Assemblies from Poly(styrene)-block-poly(4-vinylpyridine) Diblock Copolymers Mixed with 6-Hydroxy-2-naphthoic Acid

“…The most commonly reported small molecules for such supramolecular complexes are 2-(4′-hydroxybenzeneazo)benzoic acid (HABA) and 3-pentadecylphenol (PDP). Tung et al [21,31] and ten Brinke et al [32,33] have investigated the structure-within-structure morphologies in thin films involving the interaction of PDP with P4VP. Tung et al have demonstrated the correlation between the morphology orientation in thin films and the volume fraction of P4VP/PDP block [21].…”

Poly(4-Chloromethyl Styrene-g-4-Vinylpyridine)/TiO2 Thin Films as Templates for the Synthesis of Polypyrrole in the Nanometer-Sized Domain

“…Nevertheless, an advantage of the chemical method is that it can be used to polymerize pyrrole monomers onto a polymeric template, for example to obtain material with better mechanical properties or to obtain nanostructured polypyrrole [16,17]. Especially poly(4-vinylpyridine) (P4VP) has been used in this respect, due to the ability of P4VP to form complexes with various oxidants, while these retain their ability to oxidize pyrrole [18][19][20][21].…”