Self-assembly behaviors of a well-defined amphiphilic brush polymer at the air-water interface

Jonghyun Kim, Jungwoon Jung, Minh Dinh Phan, Kyung Ho Kwon, Brian J. Ree, Shunichi Nakayama, Heesoo Kim, Kwanwoo Shin, Hideki Matsuoka, Moonhor Ree

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

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 languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2445-2452
Number of pages8
JournalScience of Advanced Materials
Volume6
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014

Keywords

  • Air-water interface
  • Amphiphilic brush polymer
  • Langmuir film
  • Self-assembly
  • X-ray reflectivity

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