Molecular Combing of Various Poly(n-Alkyl Acrylate) Chains on Mica by the Dipping Method

If polymer chains could be deposited on a substrate as a fully extended chain, a procedure known as "molecular combing," the chain structure could be characterized by atomic force microscopy in more detail than has been possible with the measurements available today. We show here, for the first time, that flexible polymers can be molecularly combed to fully extended chains by the dipping method. We studied the molecular combing of a series of poly(n-alkyl acrylate)s on mica from a chloroform solution by the dipping method and found that poly(n-alkyl acrylate)s with an alkyl group longer than n-octyl can be molecularly combed into straight chains under optimized conditions. With increasing alkyl lengths, the number of chains deposited decreases by four orders of magnitude, and chains become molecularly combed under a wider range of conditions. The length of the molecularly combed chains is ∼80% for poly(n-octyl acrylate) but ∼100% of the all-trans conformation for poly(n-alkyl acrylate)s with an alkyl length longer than n-nonyl.