Combinatorial study of the mushroom-to-brush crossover in surface anchored polyacrylamide.
We present a method for fabricating anchored polymers with a gradual variation of grafting densities on solid substrates. The technique for generating such structures comprises (i) formation of a molecular gradient of polymerization initiator on the solid substrate and (ii) polymerization from the substrate-bound initiator centers ("grafting from"). We measure the mushroom-to-brush transition in grafted polyacrylamides and show that the mushroom and brush behavior can be described using existing scaling theories.
Wu
Tao
T
Department of Chemical Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh 27695-7905, USA.
Efimenko
Kirill
K
Genzer
Jan
J