The covalent grafting of polymers to single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) is widely used to improve solvent compatibility, as well as composite and functional performance. Here, three different graft-to strategies are directly compared, using azide, diazonium, and bromide terminated polymers, over four different molecular weights (oligomeric to 10 kDa) using specifically synthesized low polydispersity, end-group controlled poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc) prepared by polymerisation using a bespoke protected-amine RAFT agent. Coupling of the bromo-polymer to reduced SWCNTs led to higher degrees of functionalisation (grafting ratios up to 68.9%) than the azide and diazonium grafting reactions, attributed to better initial dispersion of the pre-grafted SWCNTs. The use of higher molecular weight polymers led to a decrease in the total weight of polymer grafted, as the increase in per-polymer weight is more than offset by steric occlusion on the SWCNT surface. For these graft-to reactions, the dispersibility of grafted SWCNTs was found to depend most strongly on the polymer molecular weight, not total weight of grafted polymer or grafting chemistry, with an intermediate M_n∼5757 PVAc giving the best dispersibilities, at up to 118 mg L⁻¹.

将聚合物共价接枝到单壁碳纳米管（SWCNT）上可广泛用于改善溶剂相容性以及复合材料和功能性能。在这里，三种不同的嫁接使用专门合成的低多分散性，端基控制的聚醋酸乙烯酯（PVAc），通过定制合成，使用叠氮化物，重氮鎓和溴化物封端的聚合物，直接比较了四种不同分子量（低至10 kDa）的叠氮化物，重氮盐和溴化物策略保护胺的RAFT剂。溴聚合物与还原的SWCNT的偶联导致比叠氮化物和重氮鎓的接枝反应更高的官能度（接枝率高达68.9％），这归因于预接枝的SWCNT的更好的初始分散性。高分子量聚合物的使用导致接枝聚合物总重量的减少，因为每聚合物重量的增加远远超过了SWCNT表面上的空间闭塞。对于这些嫁接反应，接枝单壁碳纳米管的分散性被发现最强烈地依赖于聚合物的分子量，而不是总重量接枝聚合物或接枝化学，用中间体M _Ñ ~5757的PVAc给出最佳分散度，以高达118毫克的L ^-1。