Grafting of amphiphilic polymers containing quaternary ammonium group on SiO2 surface via surface-initiated ATRP

This article reports the fabrication of hybrid silica nanoparticles using surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP) technique. The surface of silica nanoparticles were densely grafted with 2-(dimethylamino) ethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) and then quaternized with 1-bromohexane via two methods. FTIR, H-1 NMR, XPS, SEM, TGA, and GPC were used to determine the chemical structure, morphology, and other properties of the products. SEM images of nanocomposites showed spherical shaped morphology with an average diameter of similar to 50 nm and they were direct evidences that the hybrid silica nanoparticles had uniform core-shell morphology. Evolution of GPC traces of grafted polyDMAEMA showed that the SI-ATRP could be conducted in a well-controlled manner.