Surface properties of silicone-containing block-graft copolymer/polystyrene systems

Silicone-containing polymers have unique properties that make them commercially viable materials, in spite of their relatively high cost to manufacture. To expand their use profile, copolymerization with or incorporation into organic polymers has been an attractive approach. Block copolymers of organic blocks and silicone-containing blocks were shown to have specialized physical properties including low surface energies. The major drawback has been the prohibitive cost and difficulty of their manufacture. In this work, a low-cost synthesis process was used to produce the copolymers in a convenient way. The product is a copolymer of a polystyrene block with a silicone-containing block. To test the applicability of this block copolymer, we solvent-blended it with polystyrene and characterized the resulting surface of the dried solid from the blend. Contact angle measurements on the surfaces and subsequent calculations of surface free energies indicated concentration of the silicone groups on the surfaces of the solid blends.