W.M. (Wiebe) de Vos : “Brushes and Particles”


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16 Sep 2009 16:00

Unit: Wageningen University

Location: Aula, building 362, Gen. Foulkesweg 1, Wageningen

Organisation: Wageningen University

Promotor: prof.dr. M.A. Cohen Stuart (Physical Chemistry and Colloid Chemistry)

Co Promotor: Dr.ir. J.M. Kleijn, Dr. A. de Keizer

What we use becomes dirty. This is true for the clothes that we wear, for the house that we live in, and for the car that we drive. Thus, every week we spend much time cleaning these products. The central theme of this thesis is a system that could make such products dirt repelling, the so-called polymer brush. This system is built up of polymers, long molecules that consist of many, often identical, short segments. These polymers are attached very close together onto a given surface. The end-attached polymers then act as a barrier for dirt particles that would like to stick on the surface. Our most important result is new method to produce very dense polymer brushes. With this method the polymer brush is attached to an surface by a kind of molecular zipper, and it can also be easily removed again by unzipping.

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