Logo image
Suppressing Crystallinity by Nanoconfining Polymers Using Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Suppressing Crystallinity by Nanoconfining Polymers Using Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition

Zhengtao Chen and Kenneth K. S. Lau
Macromolecules, v 52(14), pp 5183-5191
23 Jul 2019

Abstract

Physical Sciences Polymer Science Science & Technology
Poly(1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyl acrylate) (PPFDA) is incorporated within a sintered mesoporous network of TiO2 nanoparticles via initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD). iCVD PPFDA grows uniformly on the pore surface of the mesoporous TiO2 (25 nm pore diameter, 2-4 mu m thick), resulting in up to 91% of the pore volume being filled. This leads to a high TiO2 loading (58 vol %, 67 wt %) in the PPFDA TiO2 nanocomposite and a large decrease in the PPFDA crystallinity by >93% compared to the bulk polymer film. The significantly suppressed crystallinity is attributed to the nanoconfinement of polymer chains in the tortuous, interconnected nanopore channels that frustrates chain alignment, and from the large interfacial energy difference between PPFDA fluoropolymer and hydroxylated TiO2 that impedes heterogeneous nucleation for crystal growth.

Metrics

8 Record Views
15 citations in Scopus

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#6 Clean Water and Sanitation

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Web of Science research areas
Polymer Science
Logo image