(57e) Relaxation Dynamics of Tethered Polymers

Dynamics of tethered polymers and polymers in confinements remains a debated issue till date. Most of the experiments reported in literature are for thin films where polymers are attached to a flat surface. We have created a bulk system to study the dynamics of tethered polymers by tethering Polyisoprene (PI) to the silica nanoparticle surface. Cis 1-4 PI is a type A dielectric implying the dipole moment of the chain is parallel to the chain backbone and relaxation of the normal mode provides information about the whole chain relaxation. We have explored the relaxation dynamics of the tethered polymer with the help of dielectric broadband spectroscopy. We find that the relaxation of tethered polymer is significantly slower than the free polymer. We have carried out this study for different molecular weight polymer chains and varying chain spacing by changing the grafting density of polymer chains.