Logo image
Velcro-mimicking surface based on polymer loop brushes
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Velcro-mimicking surface based on polymer loop brushes

Tian Zhou, Biao Han, Hao Qi, Qiwei Pan, Derrick M Smith, Lin Han and Christopher Y Li
Nanoscale, v 10(38), pp 18269-18274
04 Oct 2018
PMID: 30246845

Abstract

We herein report the fabrication of a Velcro-mimicking surface based on polymer brushes. Using poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) as the model polymer, polymer loop brushes (PLBs) and singly tethered polymer brushes (STPBs) with nearly identical tethering point density and brush heights were synthesized using a polymer single crystal (PSC)-assisted grafting-to method. Atomic force microscopy-based single molecular force spectroscopy (AFM-SMFS) and macroscale lap-shear experiments both demonstrated that the PLBs led to strong adhesion that is up to ∼10 times greater than the STPBs, which is attributed to the enriched chain entanglement between the probing polymer and the brushes. We envisage that our results will pave the way towards a new materials design for strong adhesives and nanocomposites.

Metrics

10 Record Views
12 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
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Nanoscience & Nanotechnology
Physics, Applied
Logo image