Abstract
Block copolymer guided assembly of nanoparticles leads to the formation of nanocomposites with periodic arrangement of nanoparticles, which are important for applications such as photonic devices and sensors. However, linear block copolymers offer limited control over the internal arrangement of nanoparticles inside their hosting domains. In contrast, bottlebrush block copolymers possess unique architectural attributes that enable additional ways to control the local organization of nanoparticles. In this work, we studied the coassembly of 8 and 13 nm gold nanoparticles with three bottlebrush block copolymers differing in the asymmetry of their graft lengths. Assembly was performed in ultraconfined films, where it occurs quasi-two-dimensionally. Our results indicate that graft asymmetry could be used as an additional tool to enhance nanoparticle ordering by forcing them to localize at the center of the domain regardless of their size. This behavior is analyzed in terms of the influence of the graft asymmetry on the average conformations of the blocks.
Original language | American English |
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Pages (from-to) | 196-207 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Macromolecules |
Volume | 52 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 8 Jan 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:*E-mail: roys@huji.ac.il. *E-mail: jrzayev@buffalo.edu. ORCID Uri Raviv: 0000-0001-5992-9437 Javid Rzayev: 0000-0002-9280-1811 Roy Shenhar: 0000-0002-0631-1542 Funding Financial support for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation (DMR-1409467). Notes The authors declare no competing financial interest.
Funding Information:
We thank Meirav Oded for a sample of the PS-SH ligands and Carmen Tamburu for the SAXS measurements. Y.A. thanks the Hebrew University for a doctoral fellowship; L.F. acknowledges the Levtzion Foundation for a doctoral fellowship.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 American Chemical Society.