Highly Oxygen‐Tolerant and Self‐Adaptive Surface‐Initiated Bimetal‐Mediated Controlled Radical Polymerization

Abstract

Abstract We report herein a self‐adaptive surface‐initiated bimetal‐mediated controlled radical polymerization (SI‐BMCRP) for fabricating various polymer brushes using microliter volumes under ambient conditions. The introduction of bimetal CuZn alloy can self‐adaptively control the dissociation of copper species while still realizing the controllability of polymer brush growth with high oxygen tolerance at a wide range of distances between the bimetal alloy and the initiator‐modified substrate. The successful fabrication of multiscale and multifunctional polymer brushes with high‐end group fidelity and patterned architectures further demonstrates the robust nature of SI‐BMCRP. The resultant polymer brushes show great potential for new applications in moisture‐enabled electricity generation, breath monitoring, and speech recognition.