Design of Multifunctional Nanocomposites through Mixed-Graft Block Copolymer Templating

聚合物纳米颗粒复合材料在各种应用中比传统的单组分材料具有许多优点。通过结合不同材料的理想性能，并通过聚合物-纳米颗粒界面的独特相互作用创造新功能，这些复合材料有可能彻底改变各个领域，包括传感、能量转换和软电子。该项目旨在开发一种创新的方法来生产具有多种独立可调特性的有机-无机杂化材料。为了实现这一目标，接枝共聚物和功能纳米粒子将共同组装。接枝共聚物的设计涉及将不同的聚合物侧链结合到线性主链中，从而形成新的有序纳米结构，这是其他材料难以实现的。将功能纳米粒子集成到这些纳米结构聚合物的特定域或界面中，将通过精确定义粒子和聚合物之间的相互作用来增强它们各自的功能特性。这些具有独立可调特性的纳米复合材料的成功开发对推进材料科学领域具有很大的希望，在光电子和能源器件方面具有潜在的应用前景。包含不同侧链的混合接枝嵌段共聚物（mgbcp）结合了嵌段共聚物和接枝结构的独特性能，从而提供了具有协同增强性能的材料。本项目旨在合成、加工和表征mgbcp，主要关注其作为模板材料制备多功能纳米复合材料的应用。在mgbcp中精确定义的侧链序列能够在广泛的特征长度范围内形成有序的分层纳米结构。这些mgbcp与无机纳米颗粒的共组装产生了具有层次结构的纳米复合材料，可以控制形成的纳米颗粒阵列的大小、几何形状和方向。通过合理设计mGBCP结构和聚合物与纳米颗粒的相互作用，可以精确调整或优化纳米复合材料的电子能带结构、光能转移行为和热机械性能。此外，通过不同的正交聚合物-纳米颗粒相互作用，将多种功能纳米颗粒整合到mgbcp中，将为发现具有多种独立可调特性的功能材料创造一个设计平台。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

PART 1: NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYPolymer-nanoparticle composites offer numerous advantages over traditional single-component materials for a variety of applications. By combining desirable properties from different materials and creating new functions through unique interactions at the polymer-nanoparticle interfaces, these composites have the potential to revolutionize various fields, including sensing, energy conversion, and soft electronics. This project aims to develop an innovative approach to producing hybrid organic-inorganic materials endowed with multiple independently tunable properties. To achieve this, graft copolymers and functional nanoparticles will be co-assembled. The design of graft copolymers involves the incorporation of dissimilar polymeric side chains into a linear backbone, resulting in the formation of novel ordered nanostructures that are not easily attainable with other materials. The integration of functional nanoparticles into specific domains or interfaces of these nanostructured polymers will enhance their respective functional properties through precisely defined interactions between particles and polymers. The successful development of these nanocomposite materials with independently tunable properties holds great promise for advancing the field of materials science, with potential applications in optoelectronics and energy devices.PART 2: TECHNICAL SUMMARYMixed-graft block copolymers (mGBCPs) that contain dissimilar side chains combine the unique properties of both block copolymers and graft architecture, providing access to materials with synergistically enhanced properties. This project aims to synthesize, process, and characterize mGBCPs, with a primary focus on their applications as template materials for the preparation of multifunctional nanocomposites. Precisely defined side chain sequences in mGBCPs enable the formation of ordered hierarchical nanostructures across a broad range of characteristic length scales. Co-assembly of these mGBCPs with inorganic nanoparticles results in hierarchically structured nanocomposites with control over the size, geometry, and orientation of formed nanoparticle arrays. By rationally engineering the mGBCP structures and polymer-nanoparticle interactions, electronic band structures, photoenergy transfer behaviors, and thermomechanical properties of the nanocomposites can be precisely tuned or optimized. Furthermore, integrating more than one type of functional nanoparticles into mGBCPs through diverse orthogonal polymer-nanoparticle interactions will create a design platform for the discovery of functional materials with multiple independently tunable properties..This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.