Abstract
Self-assembly characteristics of a well-defined brush polymer, poly(oxy(n-dodecyl-thiomethyl)ethylene) were in detail investigated at the air-water interface with surface-area isotherm, X-ray reflectivity, and infrared spectroscopy analyses. The brush polymer self-assembled at the air-water interface as a fully-extended chain via favorable lateral packing of the bristles in a fully extended conformation, forming highly ordered, oriented Langmuir monolayer. This well-ordered monolayer was produced via a five-regime structure formation with varying surface pressure. A Langmuir monolayer film with ≤1.92 nm thick was formed in the low surface pressure regime ≤18 mN/m and then converted to a highly dense, ordered monolayer with 3.65 nm thick in the high surface pressure regime ≥35 mN/m through monolayer-to-bilayer transition and bilayer-to-monolayer inversion. These Langmuir film formations and their ordering and orientation might be driven by the well-defined chemical architecture and the lateral orderings of the polymer backbones and the bristles in fully extended conformations.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2445-2452 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Science of Advanced Materials |
Volume | 6 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2014 |
Keywords
- Air-water interface
- Amphiphilic brush polymer
- Langmuir film
- Self-assembly
- X-ray reflectivity