Synthesis and characterization of TiO2 nanoparticles chemically coated with zwitterionic polymer brushes

This study introduces a synthetic method to graft zwitterionic poly (2-methacryroyloxyethyl phosphoryl choline) brushes onto TiO2 nanoparticles with thickness of a few nanometers. The grafting of zwitterionic polymer brushes was characterized by electron microscope measurements, zeta-potential analysis, and thermo-gravimetric analysis. The technique we employed to synthesize those hybrid nanoparticles was a modified seeded emulsion polymerization in which the polymerization loci were changed in the stage of radical initiation and chain propagation. We have found that the polymerization loci should be on the surface for achieving the effective grafting of polymer brushes. From the suspension rheology studies, we have observed that the suspension of our hybrid nanoparticles was dominated by the attractive force as well as by packing volume effect. This unique rheological behavior is expected to be useful for understanding the inter-particle interactions in complex formulations.