Fabrication and Investigation of Poly[St-Co-CMS] Loaded by Modified SiO2 as Initiator via ATRP Method

Poly[St-co-CMS] is unique functionalized copolymer, which has been used in the field of polymericmaterials [1]. The pendant chloromethyl group attached to phenyl rings of the chainsallow them to easily react with various kinds of organic moieties through nucleophilic substitutionreactions [2]. Copper-mediated polymerization techniques can be easily identified inthe literature by the use of an alkyl halide in conjunction with a ligated copper complex. Atomtransfer radical polymerization (ATRP) is one of the most rapidly developing areas of polymerscience. It allows control over molecular weight, preparation of polymers with narrowmolecular weight distributions, incorporation of precisely placed functionalities, fabricationof various architectures, and synthesis of well-defined hybrid composites [3]. In this work, wetried to fabricate poly[St-co-CMS] via ATRP method in different styrene/4-(Chloromethyl)styrene (St/CMS) ratios. To incorporate silica nanoparticles into the polymermatrix, these nanoparticles are covalently linked to 4-(Chloromethyl)phenyltrimethoxysilaneas the reaction initiator. Copper (I) chloride (CuCl) and bipyridine (Bipy) are also used as thepolyaddition reaction catalyst and ligand, respectively (fig. 1). The resulting nanocompositesare fully charecterized by Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermogravimetricanalysis (TGA), field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and X-ray diffraction(XRD) techniques.