CHEMICALLY TAILORED POLYMERIC LAYERS GRAFTED TO AND FROM A COPOLYMER FILM SURFACE

摘要

This work is part of a study aimed at creating tunable surface modifying layers. Polymer molecules were grafted at the polymer surface and the pendant groups of these grafted polymers were subsequently substituted. The polymer layer of interest in this study was poly(tert-butyl acrylate) (PtBuA) because it is relatively easy to substitute the tert-butyl ester groups with other functional groups to create a chemically tailored layer. The PtBuA was grown from the surface of ethylene-acrylic acid copolymer via atom transfer radical polymerization and was also grafted to the surface using end-functionalized PtBuA. The progression of the reactions and properties of the modified surfaces were studied using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy and static contact angle.