Issue 14, 2014

Polystyrene with hydrophobic end groups: synthesis, kinetics, interfacial activity, and self-assemblies templated by breath figures

Abstract

The breath figure method has emerged as a new self-assembly technique to fabricate ordered porous materials, which show potential applications in many fields, such as size-selective separation membranes. However, it is challenging to customize the structures, especially to precisely tune the pore size in a wide range. Moreover, the relationship between polymer structure and film morphologies is still unknown. In this paper, we report a facile, effective, and controllable way to manipulate the evolution of morphologies of honeycomb films, which is based on the blends of an amphiphilic block copolymer and polystyrenes with hydrophobic end groups. A series of atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) initiators with alkyl or fluorinated groups were synthesized for polystyrenes with hydrophobic end groups. Polymerization kinetics confirmed the viability of these ATRP initiators. Surface segregation behaviors of the hydrophobic end groups were demonstrated by measuring the surface chemical composition and surface free energies. We found that the polystyrenes with hydrophobic end groups form ordered films only at high polymer concentration (40–60 mg mL−1); moreover, the use of blends of two types of polystyrenes, one of which has a hydrophobic end group whereas the other has a hydrophilic block, can greatly increase the regularity of the honeycomb films and provide the possibility to fine-tune the pore diameter. Moreover, the evolution of surface morphologies of the films can be ideally correlated with the surface free energies of the end-functionalized polymers.

Graphical abstract: Polystyrene with hydrophobic end groups: synthesis, kinetics, interfacial activity, and self-assemblies templated by breath figures

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
12 Feb 2014
Accepted
08 Apr 2014
First published
09 Apr 2014

Polym. Chem., 2014,5, 4311-4320

Author version available

Polystyrene with hydrophobic end groups: synthesis, kinetics, interfacial activity, and self-assemblies templated by breath figures

L. Zhu, B. Wu, L. Wan and Z. Xu, Polym. Chem., 2014, 5, 4311 DOI: 10.1039/C4PY00206G

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements