Enhanced Dynamics of Confined Polymers near the Immiscible Polymer-Polymer Interface: Neutron Reflectivity Studies

Kyoung Il Jo, Younghoon Oh, Bong June Sung, Tae Ho Kim, Min Seop Um, Woo Jin Choi, Joona Bang, Guangcui Yuan, Sushil K. Satija, Jaseung Koo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

For polymer-blend films, local dynamics in confined polymer domains tend to differ from the bulk because of significant contributions from the polymer-polymer interface. Herein, we investigated the diffusion dynamics of entangled polymer thin films confined between different polymers in a direction perpendicular to the surface using neutron reflectivity. We found that a bilayer of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and deuterated PMMA (dPMMA) sandwiched between polystyrene (PS) layers exhibited significant increase in mobility near the polymer-polymer interface with decreasing PMMA thickness. This indicates that the contribution of repulsive interactions at the immiscible polymer-polymer interface becomes more significant as the film thickness decreases. We also found that the interfacial roughness between PMMA and PS (28 Å at equilibrium) and soft confinement of PS layers did not significantly affect the change in the diffusion dynamics of the adjacent PMMA. This was evidenced by comparison with the diffusion results of multilayers with a flat interface (8 Å at equilibrium) between PMMA and hard PS by UV cross-linking.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)210-215
Number of pages6
JournalACS Macro Letters
Volume9
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020 Feb 18

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by a grant from the National Research Foundation of Korea under Contract 2019R1F1A1059109.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Chemical Society.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Organic Chemistry
  • Polymers and Plastics
  • Inorganic Chemistry
  • Materials Chemistry

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