Publications related to Synthesis of functional polymers by post-polymerization modification

Soft Mechanochemistry of Disulfide-Crosslinked Polymer Networks

Mechanochemistry harnesses mechanical force to facilitate chemical reactions. Traditionally, the field of polymer mechanochemistry has used methods to activate chemical bonds, which use forces that are larger than those that are required to break a covalen ...

EPFL2024

Architecturally Diverse Polymer Brushes Prepared via Surface-Initiated Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization

Sabrina Sant

Polymer brushes, which are polymers anchored to a solid substrate by one chainend, have the ability to modify the properties of an underlying substrate, offering intriguing features such as enhanced lubrication, reduced friction, colloidal stability, and a ...

EPFL2023

Extraction and controlled functionalization of lignin for materials applications

Stefania Bertella

Lignin is a renewable aromatic polymer that due to its abundance and unique chemical structure is a promising candidate to replace aromatic materials that are currently sourced from fossil oil. The same structure of lignin poses however drawbacks for its v ...

EPFL2022

Composition and method for the preparation of sheets, films, fibers, and molded parts

Holger Frauenrath, Daniel Görl, Oguzhan Oguz

The invention describes a composition containing a) a functionalized polymer (10) that comprises at least one polyester segment (13) and at least one, in particular at least two, polymer aggregating segment (11, 12) capable of forming non-covalent bonds ba ...

2020

Functional and Responsive Polymers via Controlled Radical Polymerization

Jian Wang

This Thesis is built around 4 topics, which share in common that they all take advantage of the assets of controlled radical polymerization to either (i) prepare well-defined model systems to address fundamental research questions with regard to the sensit ...

EPFL2020

Swelling-Induced Chain Stretching Enhances Hydrolytic Degrafting of Hydrophobic Polymer Brushes in Organic Media

Harm-Anton Klok, Jian Wang

Hydrophilic polymer brushes grown via surface‐initiated polymerization from silicon oxide surfaces can detach or degraft in aqueous media. Degrafting of these chain end‐tethered polymers is believed to involve hydrolysis of bonds at the polymer–substrate i ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2019

Composition containing a polymer and an additive

John Christopher Plummer, Holger Frauenrath, Daniel Görl

The invention describes a composition containing a) a functionalized polymer (10) that comprises at least one polymer segment (13) and at least two polymer aggregating segments (11,12) capable of forming non-covalent bonds based on a supramolecular interac ...

2019

Synthesis of Loop Poly(Methyl Methacrylate) Brushes via Chain-End Postpolymerization Modification

Harm-Anton Klok, Piotr Mocny

Polymer brushes are typically densely grafted assemblies of polymer chains that are tethered via one end group to a solid substrate. Anchoring linear polymer chains via both end groups to a surface results in loop-type polymer brushes. Although loop polyme ...

American Chemical Society2019

Electrochemically polymerized poly (3, 4-phenylenedioxythiophene) as efficient and transparent counter electrode for dye sensitized solar cells

Nikolaos Vlachopoulos, Ulf Anders Hagfeldt, Lin Yang, Jiahuan Zhang, Yan Hao

A new conducting polymer poly (3, 4-phenylenedioxythiophene) is synthesized by the electrochemical polymerization technique with different solvents. We find that solvents used in electrochemical polymerization play important roles for the catalytic activit ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2019

Development of functionalized alginate-based hydrogels to reduce fibrosis in the transplantation of microencapsulated cells

François Rémi Pierre Noverraz

Nowadays, the development of cell therapy relies mainly on the advances made toward cell microencapsulation which allows to evade the need for immunosuppression during cell transplantation. Among the materials considered for cell encapsulation, hydrogels d ...

EPFL2018

Caspofungin on ARGET-ATRP grafted PHEMA polymers: Enhancement and selectivity of prevention of attachment of Candida albicans

Harm-Anton Klok, Piotr Mocny

There is a need for coatings for biomedical devices and implants that can prevent the attachment of fungal pathogens while allowing human cells and tissue to appose without cytotoxicity. Here, the authors study whether a poly(2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate) (P ...

2017

The persistence length of adsorbed dendronized polymers

Giovanni Dietler, Plinio Maroni, Michal Borkovec, Andrey Mikhaylov

The persistence length of cationic dendronized polymers adsorbed onto oppositely charged substrates was studied by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and quantitative image analysis. One can find that a decrease in the ionic strength leads to an increase of the ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2016

Mechanochemically Responsive Surfaces and Soft Tissue Adhesive Interfaces Generated via Controlled Radical Polymerization

Nariye Cavusoglu Ataman

Thin coatings applied to surfaces dramatically improve the properties of materials. Thus, they have found application in a broad variety of areas including biomedicine, nanotechnology, bioelectronics and optics, amongst others. Polymer brushes prepared via ...

EPFL2016

Polymer - Carbon Nanostructures Composites : from Chemistry to Physics, to Material Science

Maryam Majidian

Synthesis and characterization of polymer-based composites containing carbon nanostructures is the focus of this dissertation. The main polymer which has been used for this research is SU8. The motivation of the work is to overcome the drawbacks of SU8 e.g ...

EPFL2016

A Close Look at Charge Generation in Polymer:Fullerene Blends with Microstructure Control

Jacques-Edouard Moser, Natalie Stingelin, Jelissa Risse, Mariateresa Scarongella, Natalie Renuka Banerji

We reveal some of the key mechanisms during charge generation in polymer:fullerene blends exploiting our well-defined understanding of the microstructures obtained in pBTTT:PCBM systems via processing with fatty acid methyl ester additives. Based on ultraf ...

Amer Chemical Soc2015

Avoiding compositional drift during the RAFT copolymerization of N-(2-hydroxypropyl)methacrylamide and N-acryloxysuccinimide: towards uniform platforms for post-polymerization modification

Harm-Anton Klok, Hedi Ketari, Ioana-Maria Simionca, John Moraes

Controlled radical polymerization techniques such as RAFT allow fine control over polymer molecular weight and architecture. These techniques, however, do not eliminate compositional drifts in copolymerizations, which are the consequence of differences in ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2015

Fabrication of Biocompatible Monolithic Microchannels with High Pressure-Resistance Using Direct Polymerization of PEG-Modified PMMA

Martinus Gijs, Ata Tuna Ciftlik, Elena Bianchi

Withstanding high pressures in polymeric microchannels is an important requirement for many biological applications. Here, a simple direct polymerization through a polyester photomask is applied to obtain monolithic polyethylene glycol (PEG)-modified poly( ...

Wiley-Blackwell2014

Functional polypeptide and hybrid materials: Precision synthesis via alpha-amino acid N-carboxyanhydride polymerization and emerging biomedical applications

Harm-Anton Klok

Polypeptides derived from naturally occurring a-amino acids have emerged as a unique and versatile family of bio-inspired biomaterials that can be tailor-made for varying biomedical applications such as controlled drug release, gene delivery, tissue engine ...

Elsevier2014

Postpolymerization Modification of Poly(glycidyl methacrylate) Brushes: An XPS Depth-Profiling Study

Raphaël Barbey, Harm-Anton Klok, Vincent Laporte

Surface-initiated polymerization represents a versatile strategy to modify a diverse range of materials with thin, functional polymer coatings. While in many cases the desired functional groups can be directly incorporated via (co)polymerization of the app ...

American Chemical Society2013

Synthesis and post-polymerization modification of poly(pentafluorophenyl methacrylate) brushes

Harm-Anton Klok

Post-polymerization modification is a powerful strategy to endow polymers with functional groups that cannot be incorporated via direct polymerization. This manuscript explores the reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (RAFT) of p ...

2012