The organization of polypeptide rod brushes can be programmed via nanolithography and solvent pretreatments. It has been found that polymer brushes may exhibit new behavior under the influence of nanoconfinement. However, the characterization of the chain organization of these nanoconfined rod brushes are non-trivial due to the ultra-small feature sizes (sub-100nm) and highly confined structure. This study attempted to establish an understanding and visualization of the solvent-induced chain orientation behavior of polypeptide rod brushes with and without nanopatterning via experimental and computational approaches. End-point functionalization of the brushes tip was realized via chemically modifying the amine end groups with florescent probes -- the florescent intensity was found to be sensitive to the brushes' organization and orientation according to aggregation-induced characteristics of the fluorophores. Coarse-grained rod polymer models in conjunction with a density field-based energy function was built to analyze the influence of various factors on the chain orientation, end-point density and overall brush morphology.

Visualization of solvent-induced organization of polypeptide rod brushes via florescent probes and computational studies

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ACS Fall 2022

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