Wetting and vapour sorption of polymer brushes

Polymer brushes are coatings composed of polymer chains grafted to a substrate at a high density, causing the chains to extend away from the surface due to overcrowding. These brushes are valuable for surface engineering, with applications ranging from anti-fouling and lubrication to tunable-wetting surfaces. Interfacial phenomena, such as wetting, play a crucial role in various applications such as coatings.
While brushes solvated by liquids have been relatively extensively studied, intriguing and complex behaviours emerge when brushes are exposed to solvent vapours, such as water vapour.
In this thesis, the wetting and vapour swelling of polymer brushes are investigated through a combination of computational and experimental research. A key focus is the behaviour of hydrophilic brushes in humid air. To facilitate these studies, a custom-built humidity controller was developed to conduct precise humidity-controlled experiments, enabling measurements such as contact angle, ellipsometry, and infrared spectroscopy.