Conformation in Ultrathin Polymer Brush Coatings Resolved by Infrared Nanoscopy

Pereira, Andres de los Santos; Cernescu, Adrian; Svoboda, Jan; Sivkova, Radoslava; Romanenko, Iryna; Bashta, Bogdana; Keilmann, Fritz und Pop-Georgievski, Ognen (2020): Conformation in Ultrathin Polymer Brush Coatings Resolved by Infrared Nanoscopy. In: Analytical Chemistry, Bd. 92, Nr. 7: S. 4716-4720

Abstract

Polymer brush coatings are effective in preventing blood coagulation or bacterial attachment, but their chain conformation, while vital for this effect, was never characterized in high spatial resolution. Here, we report mid-infrared spectroscopic nanoscopy studies of few-nanometer-thin poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) films which reveal marked spectral variations along the surface at a length scale smaller than 100 nm and originating only from the physical conformation of the chains. The conformation and average orientation of the polymer chains in the layer is extracted from the spectra with the aid of theoretic modeling, confirming the spontaneous formation of a crystalline phase. This result suggests spectroscopic nanoscopy as a powerful new tool to characterize polymer brush coatings.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Physik
• Fakultätsübergreifende Einrichtungen: Center for NanoScience (CENS)
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 530 Physik ; 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 500 Naturwissenschaften
• ISSN: 0003-2700
• Sprache: Englisch