What is it about?
Tadpole-shaped polymers, which consist of a semiflexible ring and a rigid rod-like tail, are functionalized in such a way that either the tail or ring are able to attach to a planar surface. Due to this directed adsorption capability, our polymers create unexpected patterns both on the adsorption surface and in the vicinity of it, where they build a polymeric brush.
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Why is it important?
The organization of both the adsorbed phase and the polymeric brush can be controlled by changing the flexibility of the polymer ring: long range order of the tails on the surface can be changed to cluster organization, and coiled structures, intricate snake-like patterns and staked rings arise as the rigidity of the adsorbed rings increases.
Perspectives
By combining the virtues of topological polymers with the directed adsorption we obtained a system where the two phases exert mutual influence on each other. Properties such as the coverage of the surface can be controlled remotely through modifying the bending rigidity of the ring.
Ioana C. Gârlea
Universitat Wien
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Adsorption characteristics of Janus tadpole polymers, The Journal of Chemical Physics, June 2024, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0213433.
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