Effect of Polymer Ligand Molecular Weight on Polymer-Coated Nanoparticle Location in Block Copolymers Bumjoon J. Kim, †,‡ Glenn H. Fredrickson, †,‡,§ and Edward J. Kramer* ,†,‡,§ Department of Chemical Engineering, Materials Research Laboratory, and Department of Materials, UniVersity of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106 ReceiVed August 28, 2007; ReVised Manuscript ReceiVed October 16, 2007 ABSTRACT: Gold nanoparticles (Au-PS) coated with an areal chain density Σ of end-attached polystyrene (PS) chains of different molecular weights (M n ) are added to a lamellar diblock copolymer of poly(styrene-b- 2-vinylpyridine) (PS-b-P2VP) to determine the critical areal chain density Σ C below which the Au-PS nanoparticles adsorb to the PS-b-P2VP interface. Gold nanoparticles coated by thiol end functional polystyrene homopolymers (PS-SH) with M n ranging from 1.5 to 13 kg/mol are synthesized with various areal densities of PS-SH chains on the nanoparticle surface. The particles are incorporated into a PS-b-P2VP diblock copolymer with M n ) 196 kg/mol. The P2VP block has a more favorable interaction with a bare gold particle surface than does the PS block, and this interaction becomes important as the coverage of gold particles by PS-SH decreases, leading to adsorption of the Au-PS to the interface below a critical areal chain density Σ C . Σ C decreases from 3.1 to 0.9 chains/nm 2 as the M n of PS-SH chains increases from 1.5 to 13 kg/mol, leading to a scaling relation, ∑ C ∼ R g -1 ∼ M n -0.6 , which is very different from the behavior expected for polymer chains tethered to a flat surface, ∑ C ∼ R g -2 ∼ M n -1 , where R g is the radius of gyration of the end-attached chains. A simple scaling relationship, Σ C ∼ ((R + R g )/RR g ) 2 that takes into account the high curvature of the Au nanoparticle core of radius R, is derived and is shown to describe the data very well. For Σ ≈ Σ C , there is a slight tendency for the larger particles within the particle size distribution to adsorb preferentially to the PS/P2VP interface, a tendency that can be qualitatively understood by the fact that the absorption free energy per particle is predicted to scale roughly as R 2 . Introduction The addition of inorganic nanoparticles to block copolymers is potentially a route for the fabrication of novel functional materials such as photonic band gap materials, 1 highly efficient catalysts, 2 chemical and biological sensors, 3 and high-density magnetic storage media. 4 The domain structure of the block copolymer provides a template within which the inorganic nano- particles can be organized. A number of experimental methods have been developed for incorporating inorganic nanoparticles into polymeric nanostructures. 5-21 However, the precise control of both the size and the spatial arrangement of inorganic nanoparticles within the block copolymer is a critical require- ment for most applications. Nanoparticles with an inorganic core can be synthesized in solution using organic ligands that bind to the particle surfaces at areal ligand densities that stearically stabilize the particles against coalescence. 22-25 After purification to remove the unattached ligands, such core-shell particles in solution can be combined with a block copolymer, permitting coassembly of the block copolymer and ligand-coated nanoparticles into films by slow solvent evaporation. Early experiments 10 used alkane thiol ligands on Au nanoparticles, while in later experi- ments short polymer thiols corresponding to one or more of the blocks of the block copolymer were employed, 11,14,15,17,26 making it easier to predict where in the block copolymer the polymer-coated nanoparticles would reside. To our knowledge, there have been no systematic attempts to vary the molecular weight of the attached polymer ligands in such a system even though this molecular weight might be expected to influence both the conditions for optimum particle synthesis and the final location of the nanoparticles in the solvent cast block copolymer film. In most experiments, the particles are designed so that they will be fully wet by one of the blocks and thus will locate within that block domain. Recent experiments, however, have also focused on nanoparticles that preferentially adsorb to the interfaces between the blocks. 10,11,14,17 In two-phase, low mo- lecular weight fluid systems, small particles that adsorb to the interfaces between the phases are well-known to have surfactant like properties, enabling, for example, the formation of stable “Pickering” emulsions. 27-29 “Jamming” of such particles at fluid-fluid interfaces can stabilize bicontinuous emulsions 30 and bicontinuous blends of immiscible polymers. 31 In lamellar block copolymers, nanoparticles that adsorb to the interfaces decrease the lamellar spacing at low particle volume fractions by virtue of their action as surfactants to decrease the interfacial tension and cause a transition to a fine scale bicontinuous domain structure at high particle volume fractions. 32 Recent experiments have revealed several strategies of synthesizing nanoparticles that will adsorb at A-B block copolymer interfaces. Gold nanoparticles coated with a mixture of A and B ligands have been shown to segregate to the interface over a wide range of A fraction on the nanoparticle surface, if the ligands are free to diffuse on the Au surface. 11,33 AB random copolymer ligands are also effective in producing nanoparticles that adsorb on the interface, although in this case the A fraction must be approximately 0.5. 33 Both these methods require more synthesis steps than a third strategy, in which a Au nanoparticle that would preferentially bind to the B block is coated with an areal density of A thiol ligands too low to prevent contact with the B block if the particle adsorbs to the interface. 14 In this paper, we generalize this simple procedure for controlling the location of PS-coated gold nanoparticles within * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: edkramer@ mrl.ucsb.edu. † Department of Chemical Engineering. ‡ Materials Research Laboratory. § Department of Materials. 436 Macromolecules 2008, 41, 436-447 10.1021/ma701931z CCC: $40.75 © 2008 American Chemical Society Published on Web 12/18/2007