Grafting Polymer Chains from Inorganic Surfaces using Controlled/ 'Living' Radical Polymerizations

摘要

Living polymerization from surfaces offers the potential to control spatial and physical surface properties and to prepare composite materials with well-defined structures. The application of controlled / "living" polymerization methods to surface polymerization is relatively unexplored. We have studied the controlled / "living" radical polymerizations from the surface of silica nanoparticles using ATRP. We found that the polymerizations exhibited the diagnostic criteria for a controlled / "living" polymerization: an increase in the molecular weight of the pendant polymer chains with monomer conversion and a narrow molecular weight distribution for the grafted chains. This method offers the potential to prepare hybrid polymer / inorganic nanoparticles with precise structures.