Synthesis of reactive and stimuli-responsive polymer thin films by initiated chemical vapor deposition and their sensor applications

Stimuli-responsive polymer thin films provide the ability to control the interaction of a surface with its environment. Synthetic techniques with fine compositional control are required to engineer specific responses to stimuli. Initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) is a novel vacuum deposition technique in which polymer films are synthesized bottom-up as monomer and initiator vapors are introduced into a vacuum coating chamber. iCVD can conformally coat nanoscale, three-dimensional geometries with a high level of compositional control. Such coating capabilities are difficult by solution-based film synthesis techniques, and compositional control is difficult by other CVD techniques. In this thesis work, the synthesis and application of stimuli-responsive and reactive polymer thin films by iCVD have been studied. First, functionally versatile alternating copolymers of poly(styrene-alt-maleic anhydride) were synthesized. This was the first demonstration of alternating copolymer synthesis by CVD. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and 13C NMR characterization verified that well-defined alternating structure was present, as predicted from standard solution phase polymerizations. Next, polymer crosslinking was tuned in the synthesis of pH-responsive hydrogel thin films composed of poly(maleic anhydride-co-dimethylacrylamide-co-di(ethylene glycol) divinyl ether). These films had swelling ratios, defined as the thickness in the water-swollen state over the thickness in the dry state, in excess of 11. These films were employed as ultrathin permeable, size-selective skin layers in composite membranes.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Chemical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Tenhaeff, Wyatt E

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Karen K. Gleason.

• Chemical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/54208

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/54208