posted on 2024-01-03, 18:06authored byShengfei Li, Yuxiang Zhao, Runxiang Tan, Wuxin Zhang, Dalai Jin, Daheng Wu, Tao Zhang
The
surface-initiated iron(0)-mediated controlled radical polymerization
(SI-Fe0CRP) has attracted considerable interest in interface
modification because it allows the controlled growth of various polymer
brushes on arbitrary substrates under ambient conditions. In order
to further expand the polymer brush for different application fields,
herein, we propose a robust approach, namely, galvanic-cell-assisted
surface-initiated Fe(0)-mediated atom transfer radical polymerization
(gc-SI-Fe0ATRP). In gc-SI-Fe0ATRP, an iron-based
galvanic cell allows continuous and rapid dissociation of Fe ions
in an aqueous environment due to the galvanic-effect-accelerated corrosion
of Fe. Through this approach, microliter volumes of various vinyl
monomers could be rapidly converted to polymer brushes (up to 864
± 67 nm in 30 min) with excellent controllability and chain-end
fidelity (e.g., the successful preparation of the triblock brushes).
We also demonstrate that the gc-SI-Fe0ATRP could efficiently
polymerize ionic poly(methacryloyloxy)ethyl trimethylammonium chloride
(PMETAC) brushes on large-area n-type silicon for a triboelectric
nanogenerator (PB-TENG), which provides an excellent power output
of 4.97 μW m–2, more than 11 times higher
than the TENG without polymer brush grafted. This work demonstrates
an efficient strategy for synthesizing polymer brushes and their potential
in the functionalized electrodes for TENGs.