Development of Polymer Grafting Methodologies for Advanced Surface Engineering

Abstract

Today’s needs for complex functions and steady miniaturization of devices challenge materials scientists towards constant improvement. The interaction of materials is largely determined by their surface properties. The PhD thesis “Development of Polymer Grafting Methodologies for Advanced Surface Engineering” by Joachim Frieder Laun extends the toolbox of polymer grafting techniques by three contributions. Photoinduced copper-mediated radical polymerization was employed to graft polyacrylates from silicon substrates at extremely low catalyst concentrations. The controlled nature of this procedure was demonstrated via block copolymerization. Moreover, a 2D laser lithography protocol of the same technique is presented. Finally, nitrone-mediated radical coupling was used for grafting-to of short polyacrylates. Successful surface reactions were evidenced via XPS, ToF-SIMS and grazing angle ATR-FTIR. In addition, the development of a new polyzwitterionic polymer and the influence of the light intensity on radical thiol-ene reactions are presented.