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Swelling of multi-responsive spherical polyelectrolyte brushes across a wide range of grafting densities

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Abstract

Multi-stimulus responsive weak polyelectrolyte brushes were grafted by surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization from spherical silica nanoparticles across a wide range of grafting densities approaching the limit of close packing of grafting sites: a regime not previously explored in the brush swelling literature. Brushes consisted of poly(2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate) (PDMAEMA) homopolymers or poly(2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate)-r-poly(4-metharyloyloxyazobenzene) random copolymers P (DMAEMA-r-MOAB) and were subjected to pH-, temperature-, and photoisomerization-induced swelling and deswelling. Homopolymer brushes were prepared at grafting densities ranging from 0.12 to 1.4 nm−2 and number average degrees of polymerization ranging from 300 to 1200. Two copolymer brushes with 8 mol% and 13 mol% of the nonionizable, photoresponsive MOAB units were compared with homopolymer brushes prepared at similar grafting densities and degrees of polymerization. Dynamic light scattering was used to measure the hydrodynamic radius of grafted nanoparticles, and thus brush thickness, in water. Brush swelling in response to increased DMAEMA protonation followed a single scaling behavior across the full range of degrees of polymerization and grafting densities. Incorporating azobenzene-containing MOAB comonomers introduced a modest photoresponsive control of brush swelling and decreased the brush thickness relative to the comparable PDMAEMA homopolymer brush, without affecting the scaling with respect to protonation. PDMAEMA brushes exhibited a pH-dependent lower critical solution temperature behavior, resulting in a thermal collapse of up to 50% upon heating. This work demonstrates that scaling behaviors previously tested at low grafting densities hold for extremely high grafting densities and that they are unaffected by moderate nonionizable comonomer content.

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Acknowledgments

This material is based on work supported by the Mellon College of Science and the Carnegie Institute of Technology Dean’s Initiative and by the National Science Foundation under grant DMR-1501324.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Center for Complex Fluids Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Danish Iqbal & Robert D. Tilton

  2. Department of Chemistry, Center for Complex Fluids Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Jiajun Yan & Krzysztof Matyjaszewski

  3. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Center for Complex Fluids Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Robert D. Tilton

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  1. Danish Iqbal
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  2. Jiajun Yan
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  3. Krzysztof Matyjaszewski
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Correspondence to Robert D. Tilton.

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Iqbal, D., Yan, J., Matyjaszewski, K. et al. Swelling of multi-responsive spherical polyelectrolyte brushes across a wide range of grafting densities. Colloid Polym Sci 298, 35–49 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00396-019-04585-4

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