Investigation of Roughness Correlation in Polymer Brushes via X-ray Scattering

Polymers

卷:12

Sedakat Altinpinar¹  Wael Ali¹  Jochen S. Gutmann¹  Eui-young Shin¹  Suan Yang¹  Marcus Hildebrandt¹ 

[1] Department of Physical Chemistry and Center of Nanointegration (CENIDE), University of Duisburg-Essen, Universitätsstr. 2, 45141 Essen, Germany;

关键词: polymer thin films;    roughness correlation;    polymer brushes;    X-ray scattering;   

DOI  :  10.3390/polym12092101

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Thin polymer films and coatings are used to tailor the properties of surfaces in various applications such as protection against corrosion, biochemical functionalities or electronic resistors. Polymer brushes are a certain kind of thin polymer films, where polymer chains are covalently grafted to a substrate and straighten up to form a brush structure. Here we report on differences and similarities between polymer brushes and spin-coated polymer films from polystyrene and polymethyl methacrylate with special emphasis on surface roughness and roughness correlation. The phenomenon of roughness correlation or conformality describes the replication of the roughness profile from the substrate surface to the polymer surface. It is of high interest for polymer physics of brush layers as well as applications, in which a homogeneous polymer layer thickness is required. We demonstrate that spin-coated films as well as polymer brushes show roughness correlation, but in contrast to spin-coated films, the correlation in brushes is stable to solvent vapor annealing. Roughness correlation is therefore an intrinsic property of polymer brushes.

【 授权许可】

Unknown