Abstract
Control of the incorporation behavior of Au nanoparticles grafted with polystyrene (PS) in an ABC triblock terpolymer composed of PS, polyisoprene (PI) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) with double-helical morphology was investigated by transmission electron microtomography and three-dimensional structural analysis. The assemblies in the microdomains were controlled by varying the molecular weight of the PS molecules grafted on the Au nanoparticles. For PS-grafted Au nanoparticles >0.3 times the domain dimension of the PS microdomain in the poly(styrene-b-isoprene-b-methyl methacrylate) (SIM) film, the nanoparticles were located at the center of the PS microdomains to minimize the entropy loss of the PS segment of SIM. In contrast, Au nanoparticles <0.2 times the domain dimension adsorbed preferentially to the interface of the PS and PI microdomains to reduce the interfacial tension between the nanoparticles and SIM. Intermediate-sized Au nanoparticles were uniformly distributed in the PS microdomains. The distribution of PS-grafted Au nanoparticles was explained by the entropic and enthalpic gains in the microdomains.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Mr Kazutaka Koike of IMRAM, Tohoku University, for helping in the synthesis of gold nanoparticles. We also acknowledge Mr Yosuke Sawayama of Sumitomo Bakelite Co., Ltd. for helping in the TEMT observation. This work has been partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Numbers 25706006 and 26620171, Japan).
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Higuchi, T., Sugimori, H., Yabu, H. et al. Controlled incorporation behavior of gold nanoparticles into ABC triblock terpolymer with double-helical morphology. Polym J 48, 509–515 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/pj.2016.19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/pj.2016.19
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