Strong and tuneable wet adhesion with rationally designed layer-by-layer assembled triblock copolymer films

Andrea Träger; Samuel A Pendergraph; Torbjörn Pettersson; Tobias Halthur; Tommy Nylander; Anna Carlmark; Lars Wågberg

doi:10.1039/c6nr05659h

Strong and tuneable wet adhesion with rationally designed layer-by-layer assembled triblock copolymer films

Nanoscale. 2016 Oct 27;8(42):18204-18211. doi: 10.1039/c6nr05659h.

Authors

Andrea Träger¹, Samuel A Pendergraph¹, Torbjörn Pettersson², Tobias Halthur³, Tommy Nylander⁴, Anna Carlmark¹, Lars Wågberg²

Affiliations

¹ KTH Royal Institute of Technology, School of Chemical Science and Engineering, Department of Fibre and Polymer Technology, Teknikringen 56, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. wagberg@kth.se.
² KTH Royal Institute of Technology, School of Chemical Science and Engineering, Department of Fibre and Polymer Technology, Teknikringen 56, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. wagberg@kth.se and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Wallenberg Wood Science Centre, Teknikringen 56, SE-110 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
³ CR Competence AB, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden and Malmö University, Faculty of Health and Society, Department of Biomedical Science, SE-20506 Malmö, Sweden.
⁴ Department of Physical Chemistry, Lund University, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden.

PMID: 27752695
DOI: 10.1039/c6nr05659h

Abstract

In this study the wet adhesion between Layer-by-Layer (LbL) assembled films of triblock copolymer micelles was investigated. Through the LbL assembly of triblock copolymer micelles with hydrophobic, low glass transition temperature (T_g) middle blocks and ionic outer blocks, a network of energy dissipating polymer chains with electrostatic interactions serving as crosslinks can be built. Four triblock copolymers were synthesized through Atom Transfer Radical Polymerisation (ATRP). One pair had a poly(2-ethyl-hexyl methacrylate) middle block with cationic or anionic outer blocks. The other pair contained the same ionic outer blocks but poly(n-butyl methacrylate) as the middle block. The wet adhesion was evaluated with colloidal probe AFM. To our knowledge, wet adhesion of the magnitude measured in this study has not previously been measured on any polymer system with this technique. We are convinced that this type of block copolymer system grants the ability to control the geometry and adhesive strength in a number of nano- and macroscale applications.