Vapor Swelling of Polymer Brushes Compared to Nongrafted Films.

ABSTRACT: Polymer brushes, coatings of polymers covalently end-grafted to a surface, have been proposed as a more stable alternative to traditional physisorbed coatings. However, when such coatings are applied in settings such as vapor sensing and gas separation technologies, their responsiveness to solvent vapors becomes an important consideration. It can be anticipated that the end-anchoring in polymer brushes reduces the translational entropy of the polymers and instead introduces an entropic penalty against stretching when vapor is absorbed. Therefore, swelling can be expected to be diminished in brushes compared to nongrafted films. Here, we study the effect of the anchoring-constraint on vapor sorption in polymer coatings using coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations as well as humidity-

SUBMITTER: Ritsema van Eck GC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9671043 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature