Polymer Brushes from an Organometallic Catalyst Immobilized on a Gold Surface

摘要

Modification of inorganic substrates with polymer brushes is an effective way of controlling their properties. These polymer thin films play an important role in various fields such as surface modification, microfluidics, microelectronics, and novel biomaterials. Several ways of obtaining polymer brushes on solid substrates have been developed which include cationic1, anionic2, atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP)3 and ring opening metathesis polymerization4. In this work, a long chain of cyano alkane thiol Self-Assembled Monolayer (SAM) is formed on gold. The tail group (-CN) of SAM ligates with an organometallic catalyst [Pd(CH3CN)4](BF4)5. This catalyst is very well known to polymerize olefins carbocationically. In this investigation, we demonstrated surface initiated polymerization of p-methoxy styrene using the anchored catalyst.