Hydrolysis-Induced Self-Assembly of High-χ–Low-N Bottlebrush Copolymers

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.1c02061
• Publication Date: 2021-12-06T22:31:35Z
• Authors: Mingqiu Hu; Xindi Li; Javid Rzayev; Thomas P. Russell
• Keywords: Polystyrene; Side chain

Densely grafted bottlebrush statistical copolymers (BSCPs) and block (BBCPs) were synthesized with polystyrene (PS) poly(solketal methacrylate) (PSM) side chains to a polynorbornene backbone. The PSM could be hydrolyzed into poly(glycerol monomethacrylate) (PGM), significantly increasing the segmental interaction parameter (χ). Self-assembly of polymers was studied small-angle X-ray scattering before after hydrolysis. well-known rapid self-assembly BBCPs by thermal annealing retarded hydrolysis, due large χ between segments brushes. Utilizing well-ordered lamellar morphology we developed solid-state hydrolysis method achieve high-χ long-range order. Analysis Porod invariant showed that for BBCPs, density each phase deviated from linear homopolymer melts multiple restrictions placed on configuration