Construction of phthalocyanine-terminated polystyrene nanoarchitectures

Abstract

Nanostructuring of phthalocyanine-based materials is a powerful tool towards the preparation of new materials with outstanding properties. It has been previously shown that porphyrin-functionalized and phthalocyanine- functionalized polymers give rise to nanosized aggregates. With the goal in mind of searching new phthalocyanine-containing polymeric materials that are able to self-organize into stable supramolecular nanostructures, we have prepared unsymmetrically functionalized Zn(II) phthalocyanines that are able to behave as initiators in the atom transfer radical polymerization of styrene. Hybrid phthalocyanine-polystyrene materials of different tail lengths have been prepared, and their self-organization behavior was studied by means of UV-Vis spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Polymerization of styrene by ATRP using a series of Zn(II) phthalocyanine initiators proceeds in a controlled fashion and yields well-defined Zn(II)Pc-polystyrene hybrids with low polydispersities which form well-organized nanoarchitectures. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.