Self‐Assembling of SBS Block Copolymers as Templates for Conductive Silver Nanocomposites

Abstract

Novel nanocomposites based on conductive Ag nanoparticles and a self‐assembled polystyrene‐block‐polybutadiene‐block‐polystyrene (SBS) block copolymer were investigated. Good confinement of the nanoparticles into polystyrene microphase was achieved by the addition of DT as surfactant. The polymeric matrix kept its hexagonal order packed cylindrical structure up to 7 wt.‐% content of Ag nanoparticles. An electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) analysis of well‐dispersed metal‐organic hybrid Ag/SBS films was used to characterize the electric behavior of the conductive nanocomposites.magnified image

Stretchable, adhesive and ultra-conformable elastomer thin films

“…2c and d). In previous studies, [41][42][43] the surfaces of an SBS thin film adopted various phase-separated structures consisting of polystyrene cylinders and/or spheres in a polybutadiene matrix. According to tapping phase images and the abovementioned previous studies, the bright domains and dark domains are attributed to polystyrene and polybutadiene, respectively.…”

Differential nanofiller cluster formations in dental adhesive systems

“…Recent studies selected AFM to assess the aggregation of nanoparticles in clusters, into polymer networks (Ghosh et al, 2010;Peponi et al, 2008;Rhodes et al, 2010), but it has never been applied to dental adhesive systems. Present TM/AFM analysis permits cluster size measurement and frequency quantification of clusters formation, which is indirectly assessed through nanoroughness augment in polymer films (Roqué et al, 2005).…”

“…Recent studies selected Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to assess the aggregation of nanoparticles in clusters into polymer networks (Ghosh et al, 2010;Peponi et al, 2008;Rhodes et al, 2010). When particle agglomeration increased nanometric bumps are created, it contributes to surface nanoroughness augment (Roqué et al, 2005).…”

Morphology-properties relationship on nanocomposite films based on poly(styrene-block-diene-block-styrene) copolymers and silver nanoparticles

“…Moreover, when working with block copolymer matrices, an adequate surfactant should be able to selectively disperse nanoparticles in only one of the blocks through physical or chemical interactions, without altering the chemical structure of the block copolymer matrix. This selectivity is exploited to design the properties of nanoparticle/block copolymer hybrid systems containing well-dispersed nanoparticles [27]. As previously published by our research group [28,29], when surfactant modified silver nanoparticles are added to poly(styrene-b-isoprene-b-styrene) as well as to poly(styrene-b-butadiene-b-styrene), morphological changes can be obtained due to the enlargement of the polystyrene phase.…”

“…We took as reference the elastic modulus of bulk material considering that the value is closed to the average elastic modulus calculated by Greer et al [37] for nanoparticles silver thin films. Previously, we have studied the behavior of nanostructured copolymers when different amounts of silver nanoparticles (from 0 to 7 wt%) have been added focusing the attention on the morphological changes of the self-assembled nanostructures [27]. Following these results we have selected 1 wt%, corresponding to 0.10 vol%, as this concentration of silver nanoparticles showed a better dispersion behaviour.…”