Preparation of Polymeric Nanoscale Networks from Cylindrical Molecular Bottlebrushes

Abstract

The design and control of polymeric nanoscale network structures at the molecular level remains a challenging issue. Here we construct a novel type of polymeric nanoscale networks with a unique microporous nanofiber unit employing the intra/interbrush carbonyl cross-linking of polystyrene side chains for well-defined cylindrical polystyrene molecular bottlebrushes. The size of the side chains plays a vital role in the tuning of nanostructure of networks at the molecular level. We also show that the as-prepared polymeric nanoscale networks exhibit high specific adsorption capacity per unit surface area because of the synergistic effect of their unique hierarchical porous structures. Our strategy represents a new avenue for the network unit topology and provides a new application for molecular bottlebrushes in nanotechnology.

Fabrication and nanostructure control of super-hierarchical carbon materials from heterogeneous bottlebrushes

“…During this process, the intrabrush hypercrosslinking subdivided the original solid PS shell into numerous micropores. 32 The presence of the micropores was confirmed by an adsorption uptake at the low relative pressure ( P / P 0 ) in the N 2 adsorption–desorption isotherm of the resulting CNT@ x PS 450 (Fig. S5†).…”

Highly Monodisperse Microporous Polymeric and Carbonaceous Nanospheres with Multifunctional Properties

“…Just as expected, the resulting control sample had a much larger hydrodynamic diameter (473 vs 228 nm) and a much higher PDI (0.105 vs 0.005) than its precursory PS-1 (Figure S4), indicative of obvious crosslinking between nanospheres in the case of slow hypercrosslinking reaction. High-resolution TEM image in Figure 2d reveals that MMPNS-CT1 presented a unique 3D network-type microporosity, because of its hypercrosslinked structure characteristic (Figure S5)373839. The introduction of microporosity is well supported by a slight increase of particle diameter for MMPNS-CT1 relative to its precursory PS-1 (246 vs 228 nm), Figure S7a.…”

“…After that, the catalyst gradually penetrated through the outer skin into the inside to undergo the intra-sphere hypercrosslinking, leading to the product MMPNS-CT1. The MMPNS-CT1 had a weight gain of about 28 wt.% because of the introduction of –CO– crosslinking bridges from the crosslinker CCl 4 (Figures S5 and S6)36373839, which could be translated into the molar ratio of styrene unit to –CO– bridge approximately equal to 1, indicating a hypercrosslinked structure characteristic.…”

Synthesis and Characterization of a Liquid Crystalline Polyferrocenylsilane Brush

“…Recently, polymer brush, defined as a one-dimensional brush possessing densely grafted side chains on a linear polymer main chain or solid surfaces, has attracted much more attention due to their unique properties and several potential applications [1,2], such as high aspect ratio nanowires [3], supersoft elastomers [4], nanotubes and hollowed nanoparticles [5][6][7], photonic crystals [8][9][10], molecular tensile machines [11,12], and nanoporous materials [13,14]. Polymer brush has also been used in the liquid crystal display application for realizing the controllable alignment of liquid crystalline molecules in the devices.…”