Synthesis and applications of polymer molecular brushes

This article highlights the recent development of synthesized polymer molecular brushes, which are formed by high-densely attaching polymers via different strategies to linear polymers, dendrimers or dendronized polymers. Three different synthetic methods for molecular brushes, e.g. "grafting through", "grafting from" and "grafting to" are detailed and compared based on the achievable molar mass and structure perfection of the resulted molecular brushes, together with some conformation dependence. Some reports on the synthesis and conformational. study of peptide brushes and. thermally switchable polymer brushes were also included. The applications of molecular brushes in different areas, such as nano-materials for surface modification and nano-wires are also introduced briefly.