Cylindrical Nanostructure of Rigid-Rod POSS-Containing Polymethacrylate from a Star-Branched Block Copolymer

Raita Goseki; Akira Hirao; Masa-Aki Kakimoto; Teruaki Hayakawa

doi:10.1021/mz400125t

Cylindrical Nanostructure of Rigid-Rod POSS-Containing Polymethacrylate from a Star-Branched Block Copolymer

ACS Macro Lett. 2013 Jul 16;2(7):625-629. doi: 10.1021/mz400125t. Epub 2013 Jul 3.

Authors

Raita Goseki¹, Akira Hirao^{1

2}, Masa-Aki Kakimoto¹, Teruaki Hayakawa¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Organic, Polymeric Materials, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1-S8-36 O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan.
² Institute of Polymer Science, Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 10617, Taiwan.

PMID: 35581795
DOI: 10.1021/mz400125t

Abstract

A nanostructure consisting of rectangular polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) nanodomains packed into a hexagonal lattice was observed in POSS-containing A₂B star-branched polymers. The A₂B star-branched polymers, which comprised polystyrene (A) and bulky POSS-containing poly(methacrylate) (PMAPOSS) (B) units, were synthesized by anionic polymerization and addition reaction. The self-assembled structures of the A₂B star-branched polymers were studied via transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS and WAXS, respectively). It was found that a rectangular nanostructure was packed into a hexagonal arrangement of nanodomains for a PMAPOSS volume fraction of 40 vol. % in the star-branched polymer. In addition, the cylinder-like nanostructure of bulky POSS observed, which is not observed in the case of PS-b-PMAPOSS diblock copolymers, was formed owing to the curvature effect, which is the result of the branched architecture of the copolymer.