Effects of thiocyanate anions on switching and structure of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) brushes

In this work, we investigate the effects of thiocyanate anions on the switching and the structure of poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) brushes using a molecular theory. Our model takes into consideration the PNIPAM-anion bonds, the electrostatic effects and their explicit coupling to the PNIPAM conformations. It is found that at low thiocyanate anion concentration, as the anion concentration of thiocyanate increases, thiocyanate anions are more associated with PNIPAM chains through the PNIPAM-anion bonds, which contributes to stronger electrostatic repulsion and leads to an increase of lower critical solution temperature (LCST). By analyzing the average volume fractions of PNIPAM brushes, it is found that the PNIPAM brush presents a plateau structure. Our results show that the thiocyanate anions promote phase segregation due to the PNIPAM-anion bonds and the electrostatic effect. According to our model, the reduction of LCST can be explained as follows:at high thiocyanate anion concentration, with the increase of thiocyanate concentration, more ion bindings occurring between thiocyanate anions and PNIPAM chains will result in the increase of the hydrophobicity of PNIPAM chains; when the increase of electrostatic repulsion is insufficient to overcome the hydrophobic interaction of PNIPAM chains, it will lead to the reduction of brush height and LCST at high thiocyanate anion concentration. Our theoretical results are consistent with the experimental observations, and provide a fundamental understanding of the effects of thiocyanate on the LCST of PNIPAM brushes.