Stimuli-responsive materials are changing the landscape of actuated materials, optoelectronics, molecular machines, solar cells, temporary memory storage, and biomedical materials. Specifically, photo-responsive polymers have gained acceleration in research and application since the last two decades in the form of a surface coating and micro-patterns. Light as a stimulus can be coherent, mono or polychromatic, tunable for power (intensity) and energy (wavelength), and has precise spatiotemporal control. Conventional surface coating techniques such as spin coating are unable to impart properties to the coatings in terms of sturdiness, homogeneity, uniformity over the complex surface, post deposition modification, and process efficiency. Also, in the field of photoreponsive polymers, there is no simple technique for surface-patterning of photo-responsive polymers, which is an important missing link between current research and future potential applications. This dissertation designs new strategies for light-mediated ring opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) to synthesize a diverse class of stable photo-responsive polymers and coatings. Firstly, we propose a new synthetic route to functionalize surface-initiated ring opening metathesis polymerization (SI ROMP) coatings. The backbone of ROMP polymers has internal carbon-carbon double bonds which are potential sites to introduce additional functionalities like stimuli-responsive functional groups. We leverage these unsaturated bonds to incorporate functionalized side chains using thiol-ene click chemistry. Thiol-ene chemistry is a versatile approach to attach diverse functional groups at the site of a carbon-carbon double bond. This approach was tested by grafting 3 types of thiols with different functional tail groups and can be readily used for any polyolefin coatings. Secondly, oxidative degradation of SI ROMP coatings in the organic solvent is a common problem resulting in a decrease in the film thickness due to polymer chain cleavage. We incorporated a custom designed crosslinker to the polynorbornene (pNB) coatings to prepare in situ crosslinked pNB coatings. This approach provides a crosslinked coating of pNB with significantly increased stability against organic solvents by decreasing the film loss from 73 % to 28 %. Lastly, a novel approach of making photo-responsive polymer by light mediated ROMP is demonstrated. Light mediated control over rate of polymerization is the key feature required for patterning surface with photoresponsive polymers. We achieved this goal by designing and synthesizing a monomer that effectively controls the activity of the catalyst by temporarily deactivating it on irradiation with UV 365 nm light and reactivating it back by irradiation with blue 455 nm light to resume the ROMP.

Ce travail de thèse vise à concevoir de nouvelles membranes performantes pour la séparation de gaz (CO2) dans le procédé de post-combustion. La stratégie proposée repose sur la préparation de membranes hybrides organiques/inorganiques, combinant des supports poreux de dioxyde de titane (TiO2) intégrés dans une couche dense de polymère à base de poly-oxyde d'éthylène. L'un des points important de cette étude est l'ancrage de la phase organique sur le support inorganique. Deux agents de couplage : le propyl phosphonique acide 2-bromo-2-méthyl propanoate et le 3--propylamino triéthoxy silan ont été sélectionnés et greffés sur trois surface de TiO2 différentes : des nanoparticules, des surfaces denses et des surfaces poreuses. Pour chacune des deux molécules d'ancrage les meilleurs résultats ont été obtenus avec les nanoparticules. Les nanoparticules de TiO2 ainsi fonctionnalisées, ont dans une seconde étape, servi de semences pour l'élaboration de particules coeur-écorce. Deux voies de polymérisation ont été explorées avec succès : la si-ATRP et la si-ROMP. Dans le premier cas des greffons de poly-poly-éthylène glycol méthyl éther méthacrylate ont été introduits sur les nanoparticules de TiO2. Pour la si-ROMP les greffons incorporés sont à base de polynorbonène. Les résultats obtenus sur les nanoparticules de TiO2 ont été exploités afin de créer des couches polymères sur des supports poreux céramiques tubulaires commerciaux. Deux modes de conception ont été développés : la voie dite "coating onto" et celle dite "Grafting from". Les membranes composites obtenues par ces deux voies ont été testées en perméabilité des gaz afin de déterminer la qualité des couches polymères. Des essais préliminaires de séparation des gaz ont été également effectués. / This thesis work aims towards designing hybrid membranes for CO2 separation in the post-combustion process. The different methods of existing technologies are compared ans assessed for their merit, and the decision of using inorganic titanium dioxide supports integrated with a grown polymeric/PEG layer is made. First, the structure of the interfacing group is determined and narrowed down to phosphonic-based anchoring groups. The modification of various titanium oxide surfaces (i.e. particle, flat and porous) is performed with each group, and particles were found to yield the highest surface modification. Secondly, the functionalized particles of titania were then studied for their potential with si-ATRP and si-ROMP. in the case of phosphonic acid functionalized titania, the particles yielded a bromine terminus that could be used for si-ATPR. In the case of the silane grafted titania particles, further fonctionalization was required to ultimately yield a norbornenyl group that can be used for Si-ROMP. Both teechniques were shown to work, and were thus applied to longer ceramic tubes. Finally the development of two pathways ("Coating onto" and "Grafting from") were assessed for their ability to modify the tubular ceramic support and preliminary gas separation tests were performed.