Rare earth-mediated group transfer polymerization of methacrylates is well established and has recently been shown to be applicable for the synthesis of poly(vinylphosphonate)s. One of the reaction pathways to initiate polymerization involves protonation of a bis(dimethylsilylamide)-ligand in a (Cp)2Ln(bdsa) precursor complex by an XH group (X = O, S, C) to establish a labile Ln-X bond, which results in transfer of X to a coordinated monomer at the initiation step and can therefore be used to introduce chain end functionalization. The idea of this work was the immobilization of such XH groups on silicon surfaces and formation of poly(vinylphosphonate) brushes via surface-initiated group transfer polymerization (SI-GTP). Different spacer lengths and morphologies between the Si surface and the functional group as well as different functionalities have been investigated. Resulting surfaces were analyzed by DRIFT spectroscopy, XPS, contact angle measurements and ellipsometry.

Functionalized silicon as macroinitiator for surface-initiated group transfer polymerization

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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