Synthesis of low surface energy thin film of polyepichlorohydrin-triazole-ols

Hypothesis
The dispersive and polar components of surface energy are influenced by the effective molecular size and the intra-molecular configurations of the polar groups, respectively. The surface energy was hypothesized that the surface energy of a polyepichlorohydrin (PECH)-triazole polymer can be reduced by adding an end hydroxyl group (a polar group) which can interact with the nitrogen on the triazole group to reduce the net dipole of the molecule and to reduce the increase in dispersive surface energy by the addition of alkyl chain (dispersive group).

Experiments
The chlorine atom on PECH rubber was firstly substituted by an azide group, which was then converted to triazole groups linked with alkyl-ol that contained 1–4 carbon atoms. The polymers thus-produced were then spin-coated onto a silicon wafer to form a thin film characterized by static contact angles (30 s contact) and dynamic contact angles for drops of water and diiodomethane.

Findings
The newly synthesized materials have sufficient thin film-formation capacity. Dual interactions that involve interactions between alkyl-ol hydroxyl group and amine nitrogen and the interaction between ether oxygen and imine nitrogen cause the dispersive surface energy to decrease as the alkyl chain length increases. Consequently, a very low polar surface energy of 0.14 mJ/m2 was obtained for PECH-triazole-propyl-ol, a material without any halogen atoms.