Characterizing Polymer Brushes via Surface Wrinkling

Published

November 21, 2007

Author(s)

Heqing Huang, Jun Y. Chung, Adam J. Nolte, Christopher M. Stafford

Abstract

We present the application of surface wrinkling to measure the properties of polymer brush layers tethered to the surface of a deformable silicone substrate. It is demonstrated that the wavelength of the wrinkling pattern linearly increases with the length / thickness of the brush, yielding a Young s modulus for the brush layer that is comparable to that of the corresponding bulk polymer. Moreover, we show that the wrinkling wavelength (micrometer length scale) can provide an accurate measure of the brush thickness (nanometer length scale), a difficult measurement to conduct on transparent substrates used in this study. The covalent attachment of the polymer chains to the substrate also enables the wrinkled pattern to be completely reversible (wrinkled/flat) by alternating thermal and solvent treatments.The ability to switch between a wrinkled film and a flat film will be a useful tool for many applications such as measuring adhesion on reversibly rough surfaces and creating responsive components in microfluidic devices.

Citation

Chemistry of Materials

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

biocompatable, brush, buckling, modulus, silicone, surface chemistry, wrinkling

Citation

Huang, H. , Chung, J. , Nolte, A. and Stafford, C. (2007), Characterizing Polymer Brushes via Surface Wrinkling, Chemistry of Materials, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=852755 (Accessed October 13, 2025)