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Updated: Jul 28, 2026
Preparation and Friction Force Microscopy Measurements of Immiscible, Opposing Polymer Brushes
Published on: December 24, 2014
Quantitative Analysis of Polymer Brush Formation Kinetics Using Quartz Crystal Microbalance: Viscoelasticity of
Hirokazu Tanoue1, Norifumi L Yamada2, Kohzo Ito1
1Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo , Chiba 277-8561, Japan.
Abstract:
Polymer brush formation kinetics was measured by quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). In the QCM measurement anomalous complex frequency shift as a function of graft density was observed: dissipation rate shift ΔΓ first increased, showed a peak, and then decreased despite the graft density of the polymer brush was increasing monotonically. We calculated the shear modulus of the brush layer from the measured complex frequency shift and revealed that the peak of ΔΓ described the crossover from a viscous brush layer to elastic brush layer. The crossover for the poly(ethylene glycol) with a molecular weight of 2000 occurs at around the characteristic graft density of 0.17 chains/nm2 which was revealed from the structure analysis by surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and neutron reflectivity (NR).
