Grafted polymer monolayers approaches

Prucker and Riihe [147,148] reported the conventional free RP of styrene from the surface of silica gel coated with a monolayer of covalently bound azo initiator. Graft polymers with high, controlled graft density could be obtained. However, conventional free RP, especially when confined to a thin layer, leads to a wide molecular weight distribution of the grafted polymers, largely due to the termination reactions. Moreover, this approach is no suitable for preparing block copolymers. 

Self-assembly and grafting techniques have been used to attach both polymeric and monomeric materials to surfaces. The result of this approach is well-ordered monolayers in the case of monomeric precursors (See Section 4.3 above). Polymers... 

In a first example, for a densely grafted PEL brush system positively charged quaternized poly-4-vinylpyridine brushes have been prepared by following a two step approach [2, 63, 64, 66]. In the first step a neutral poly-4-vinylpyridine monolayer is prepared and, subsequently, charges are introduced by a second, polymer-analogous quaternization step. The grafting density of the parental neutral brush is adjusted by varying the polymerization time (Fig. 12) [63, 64]. The substrates were planar silicon substrates in... 

One strategy to improve the adhesion between a substrate and a functional coating is the establishment of a covalent chemical bond between the polymer molecules, of which the functional layer consists, and the surface of the substrate. Most approaches in that direction use polymers carrying an anchor group either as an end-group or in a sidechain, which can be reacted with appropriate sites at the substrate surface yielding surface-attached monolayers ( grafting to ) [8-12], Such a chemisorption process is in some aspects closely related to the... 

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