Polymer Coupling via Hetero-Disulfide Exchange and Its Applications to Rewritable Polymer Brushes

An iodide-terminated polymer (Polymer-I) is converted to a thiol-terminated (Polymer-SH) using HSCH2CH2SH in remarkably short time (10 min). Polymer-SH further pyridyl disulfide-terminated (Polymer-SS-Py). The hetero-coupling of and Polymer-SS-Py successfully achieved quantitatively generate disulfide (Polymer-SS-Polymer). Exploiting this efficient technique, attached (grafted) on Py-SS-immobilized surface brush via (-SS-) linkage (writing process). -SS- cleaved by the treatment with dithiothreitol (DTT) detach from (erasing Subsequently, another (rewriting Thus, writable, erasable, rewritable achieved. Hydrophilic, hydrophobic, super-hydrophobic polymers are surface, tailoring wettability writing-erasing-rewriting cycles. also chain-end Py-SS-functionalized generating block copolymer surface. A patterned obtained photo-irradiation photo-mask erasing process. metal-free synthetic procedure, accessibility brushes, switchable properties writing–erasing–rewriting process attractive features present approach.