The ability to tailor polymer brush coatings to the last
nanometer
has arguably placed them among the most powerful surface modification
techniques currently available. Generally, the synthesis procedures
for polymer brushes are designed for a specific surface type and monomer
functionality and cannot be easily employed otherwise. Herein, we
describe a modular and straightforward two-step grafting-to approach
that allows introduction of polymer brushes of a desired functionality
onto a large range of chemically different substrates. To illustrate
the modularity of the procedure, gold, silicon oxide (SiO2), and polyester-coated glass substrates were modified with five
different block copolymers. In short, the substrates were first modified
with a universally applicable poly(dopamine) primer layer. Subsequently,
a grafting-to reaction was performed on the poly(dopamine) films using
five distinct block copolymers, all of which contained a short poly(glycidyl
methacrylate) segment and longer segment of varying chemical functionality.
Ellipsometry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and static water contact
angle measurements confirmed successful grafting of all five block
copolymers to the poly(dopamine)-modified gold, SiO2, and
polyester-coated glass substrates. In addition, our method was used
to provide direct access to binary brush coatings, by simultaneous
grafting of two different polymer materials. The ability to synthesize
binary brush coatings further adds to the versatility of our approach
and paves the way toward production of novel multifunctional and responsive
polymer coatings.