NANOSTRUCTURES FORMED THROUGH CYCLOHEXADIENE POLYMERIZATION

摘要

A nanostructure formation process that includes the step of polymerizing a diene under conditions suitable to yield a structure having at least one dimension ranging from 1 to 100 nanometers. More specifically, the self-assembly of block copolymers of styrene and 1,3-cyclohexadiene is exploited to form a cylinder-in-cylinder morphology, followed by crosslinking of poly(cyclohexadiene) (PCHD) and removal of the polystyrene (PS) segments, as a means for producing novel functionalized PCHD nanotubes. PCHD may be aromatized to poly(phenylene) (PP), a strong, crystalline, and thermally stable engineering polymer. These materials characterized in terms of their sizes, shapes, surface chemistry and mechanical properties. Composites incorporating these nanotubes can be used in a new class of robust, lightweight, high strength materials.