Molecular Arrangement of Organized Molecular Films of Linear and Cyclic Amphiphilic Block Copolymers with Different Shapes

Abstract

A "topological polymer chemistry" as a new concept in polymer science at the air/water interface is investigated by using amphiphilic linear and cyclic block copolymers consisting of butyl acrylate and ethylene oxide. The relatively stable monolayers of these two kinds of amphiphilic copolymers were formed at the air/water interface. In addition, these two kinds of amphiphilic copolymers constructed highly ordered Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) multilayers. In order to estimate the layered regularity under high temperature, the temperature-controlled out-of-plane X-ray diffraction (XRD) of LB films of amphiphilic linear and cyclic block copolymers was obtained. As a result, excellent heat-resistant propertyies of organized molecular films of the cyclic copolymer were confirmed. At room temperature, both copolymers showed clear diffraction peaks based on the formation of highly ordered layer structures. However, in the case of linear copolymers, layered structures were gradually disordered with heating. On the other hand, regularity of LB multilayers of the cyclic copolymers did not change with heating up to 50 °C. In this case, higher order reflections (d 002 , d 003 ) of XRD are also unchanged, which means the formation of highly ordered regularity.

Topological “interfacial” polymer chemistry: Dependency of polymer “shape” on surface morphology and stability of layer structures when heating organized molecular films of cyclic and linear block copolymers ofn-butyl acrylate-ethylene oxide

“…The molecular structure and packing of these polymers at an air/water interface and on solid substrates are of interest to the field of basic polymer science. In this paper, topological polymer chemistry at the air/water interface has been investigated using amphiphilic linear (AB‐type diblock and ABA‐type triblock) and cyclic block copolymers . In addition, the ability of these three topological polymers to maintain the characteristics of layer regularity under heating were examined (Fig.…”