Tuning the Relaxation of Imprinted Polymer Films with Polymer-Grafted Nanoparticles

Environmentally Friendly Synthesis of Polymer-Grafted Nanoparticles

Tuning the Mechanical Properties of Polymer Nanocomposites Filled with Grafted Nanoparticles by Varying the Grafted Chain Length and Flexibility

By employing coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation, we simulate the spatial organization of the polymer-grafted nanoparticles (NPs) in homopolymer matrix and the resulting mechanical performance, by particularly regulating the grafted chain length and flexibility. The morphologies ranging from the agglomerate, cylinder, sheet, and string to full dispersion are observed, by gradually incr...

Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Nanoparticles for Formaldehyde Sensing with QCM

Herein, we report on molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) for detecting formaldehyde vapors in air streams. A copolymer thin film consisting of styrene, methacrylic acid, and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate on quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) yielded a detection limit of 500 ppb formaldehyde in dry air. Surprisingly, these MIPs showed specific behavior when tested against a range of volatile o...

Modeling the anisotropic self-assembly of spherical polymer-grafted nanoparticles.

Recent experimental results demonstrated that polymer grafted nanoparticles in solvents display self-assembly behavior similar to the microphase separation of block copolymers and other amphiphiles. We present a mean-field theory and complementary computer simulations to shed light on the parametric underpinnings of the experimental observations. Our theory suggests that such self-assembled str...

Assembly of Nanoparticles using Surface-Grafted Orthogonal Polymer Gradients

Polymer-coated surfaces are routinely used in industrially important applications including prevention of biofouling (in fabrication of protein-resistant surfaces), improving stability of colloidal dispersions, surface lubrication, or enhancing wettability and adhesion. Polymer chains chemically bound to the surface represent a special class of polymer coatings that has gained considerable atte...