pH-Responsive Polyelectrolyte Brushes Studied by Neutron Reflectivity and in situ ATR-FTIR

DOI

pH-responsive polymer brushes comprise of long polymer chains of either a weak acid or base chemically attached to a surface. Depending upon the degree of ionisation along the chain the solubility of the polymer chain in aqueous environment changes dramatically, causing the brush to swell and expand, or to collapse. We propose to measure the detailed profile of pH-responsive polymer brushes on a silicon substrate as a function of pH using neutron reflectivity whilst simultaneously, for the first time, measuring the degree of ionisation along the polymer chain using in-situ FT-IR on the same sample. This will allow us to map the density profiles (neutrons) of polyelectrolyte brushes and to accurately measure their extent of ionisation (FTIR) during pH switches.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.24085956
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/24085956
Provenance
Creator Dr Paul Topham; Dr Jonathan Howse; Dr Andrew Glidle
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2014
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Photon- and Neutron Geosciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2011-05-27T08:19:58Z
Temporal Coverage End 2011-05-29T23:00:30Z