Thermoresponsive graphene oxide‐PNIPAM nanocomposites with controllable grafting polymer chains via moderate in situ SET–LRP |
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Authors: | Yan Deng Jin Zhong Zhang Yongjun Li Jianhua Hu Dong Yang Xiaoyu Huang |
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Affiliation: | 1. Key Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry and Laboratory of Polymer Materials, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 345 Lingling Road, Shanghai 200032, People's Republic of China;2. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, California 95064;3. State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, People's Republic of China |
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Abstract: | In this study, we report a mild and efficient strategy for growing thermosensitive polymers directly from the surface of exfoliated graphene oxide (GO). Exfoliated GO sheets were sequentially subject to the epoxide ring‐opening reaction with tris(hydroxymethyl) aminomethane (TRIS) to increase the amount of reactive sites, the esterification with 2‐bromo‐2‐methylpropionyl bromide to introduce the Br‐containing initiating groups, and the surface‐initiated single electron transfer–living radical polymerization of N‐isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) to tune the molecular weights of grafted polymers. All these reactions were performed at ambient temperature without losing any other oxygen‐containing functionality on GO. The resulting TRIS‐GO‐PNIPAM nanocomposites still maintain the separated single layers in dispersion, and the dispersibilities in organic solvents are significantly improved. Meanwhile, the aqueous dispersion of TRIS‐GO‐PNIPAM shows reversible temperature switching self‐assembly and disassembly behavior at about 40°C. Such smart graphene‐based hybrid materials are promising for applications in nanoelectronics, sensors, and microfluidic switches. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2012 |
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Keywords: | graphene oxide nanocomposites PNIPAM single electron transfer– living radical polymerization (SET– LRP) synthesis |
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