IRON OXIDE NANOPARTICLES

Templating ordered assemblies of magnetic oxide nanoparticles within self-assembled diblock copolymers of varying morphologies is an important problem with a wide applicability such as in electromagnetics, optical devices, metal catalysts, medicine and biology. In this thesis, the effects of different polymer structures on particle ordering and resultant magnetic properties have been investigated using various mi-crostructure and magnetic characterization tools. Ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of norbornene and function-alized norbornene monomers has been used to synthesize diblock copolymers of narrow polydispersities using Grubbs ’ catalyst. These block copolymers can be used as templates to form inorganic nanoparticles. In this research, the struc-tural and physical understanding of the inorganic-copolymer system was studied by small-angle neutron and x-ray scattering techniques and transmission electron mi-croscopy. Synthesis of γ-Fe2O3 nanoparticles has been achieved within novel block copolymers of (norbornene)-b-(deuterated norbornene dicarboxylic) acid and (nor-bornene methanol)-(norbornene dicarboxylic acid). The polymer morphologies wer