(241a) Tailoring the Conformation and Stimulus Response of Polymer Brushes

Polymer brushes grafted to surfaces are ideal candidates to manipulate interfacial properties due to their low cost, facile processability, high flexibility, and stimuli-responsive behavior. A critical challenge in tailoring the functionality of these surfaces is in understanding how the brush conformation, dictated in part by the polymer molecular weight distribution as well as polymer chemistry, affects the responsive behavior. In this talk I will describe experiments on flat and spherical brushes in which we explore the effects of polymer dispersity on the conformation of polymer brushes grafted to surfaces, and characterize the effects of dispersity on the response to changes in solution pH. These experiments reveal that dispersity can be used as a design parameter to tunably control the responsive behavior of these soft, functional interfaces. I will also present recent results exploring the effects of charge fraction on the conformation and response of polyelectrolyte brushes, and show how this property can be used to alter molecular transport within the brushes.