Polymer brushes grafted from graphene via bioinspired polydopamine chemistry and activators regenerated by electron transfer atom transfer radical polymerization

Abstract

Polymer brushes decorated reduced GO (rGO) with advanced applications have been prepared by bioinspired polydopamine (PDA) chemistry integrated with activators regenerated by electron transfer atom transfer radical polymerization (ARGET‐ATRP) technique. First, rGO/PDA was obtained by the process for graphene oxide (GO) coated with a homogeneous bio‐adhesive PDA layer. Then the initiator 2‐bromoisobutyryl bromide (BIBB) was immobilized on the surface of PDA functionalized rGO. Finally, rGO/PDA‐Br was polymerized with N, N‐diethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DEAEMA) and glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) to obtain rGO/PDA‐g‐polymer brushes by ARGET‐ATRP process. The prepared rGO/PDA‐g‐PGMA brush would be subjected to further functionalization with ethylenediamine (EDA), which would impart the obtained products (rGO/PDA‐g‐PGMA‐NH2) with good adsorption ability toward cationic dyes. The chemical structures and morphologies of the functionalized GO products have been characterized in detail by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope(TEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The distinctive pH‐responsive character of rGO/PDA‐g‐PDEAEMA and adsorption ability of rGO/PDA‐g‐PGMA‐NH2 for cationic dyes have been explored by UV–vis spectrophotometer. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2019, 57, 689–698

Surface Functionalization of Graphene Oxide with Polymer Brushes for Improving Thermal Properties of the Polymer Matrix

“…Preparation of rGO/PDA and rGO/PDA-Br. The preparation procedures of polydopamine-coated reduced graphene oxide (rGO/PDA) and BIBB-coated rGO/PDA (rGO/PDA-Br) were the same as our previous report [45].…”

“…Moreover, ARGET-ATRP also has good atmosphere tolerance. Although many different polymers have been grafted from various solid substrates via the ARGET-ATRP technique [39][40][41][42][43], grafting polymer brushes from graphene materials by ARGET-ATRP is still scarcely reported [44,45].…”

“…Grafting of polymers from solid substrates by the combination of PDA chemistry and ARGET-ATRP has been firstly reported in our previous work [45,46]. Preparation of grafted polymer-functionalized reduced graphene oxide (rGO) by PDA chemistry and ARGET-ATRP has not been reported by other research groups.…”

Bioinspired Design of Graphene‐Based Materials

“…The most straightforward example is the solubility enhancement achieved by grafting different types of polymers to PDA-graphene to endow the resulting hybrids with improved solution-phase stability and pH sensitivity. [188,195,196] On the other hand, by grafting biologically active molecules such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-sensitive aptamers, [197] graphene response to these molecules can be dramatically enhanced. The spectrum of functional molecules that can be added in this way to graphene is vast and limited only by the creativity of the researcher.…”

Surface-Induced ARGET ATRP for Silicon Nanoparticles with Fluorescent Polymer Brushes

“…Firstly, the ARGET ATRP initiator was grafted from the SNPs surface and used to initiate styrene polymerization on SNPs surface, which can make resulted in SNPs-g-PS hybrid materials. Owing to the livingness of the ATRP process [45,46,47] (which also can be verified by 1H-NMR in this work), the end group of the PS block can be reinitiated to continue the polymerization on SNPs surface with the hydrophilic monomer, HEMA and HEMA-RhB, resulting in the SNPs- g -PS- b -PHEMA- co -PHEMA-RhB. The purpose of this study is to obtain hybrid materials with good dispersion in different solvents, and to endow this material with certain fluorescence characteristics, so as to further broaden the application of SI-ARGET ATRP.…”