Analysis of the cluster formation in two-component cylindrical bottle-brush polymers under poor solvent conditions. A simulation study
- Author(s)
- Panagiotis Theodorakis, Wolfgang Paul, Kurt Binder
- Abstract
Two-component bottle-brush polymers, where flexible side chains containing N = 20, 35 and 50 effective monomers are grafted alternatingly to a rigid backbone, are studied by Molecular Dynamics simulations, varying the grafting density sigma and the solvent quality. Whereas for poor solvents and large enough sigma the molecular brush is a cylindrical object with monomers of different type occupying locally the two different halves of the cylinder, for intermediate values of sigma an axially inhomogeneous structure of "pearl-necklace" type is formed, where microphase separation between monomers of different type within a cluster takes place. These "pearls" have a strongly non-spherical ellipsoidal shape, due to the fact that several side chains cluster together in one "pearl". We discuss the resulting structures in detail and we present a comparison with the single-component bottle-brush case.
- Organisation(s)
- Computational and Soft Matter Physics
- External organisation(s)
- Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
- Journal
- European Physical Journal E
- Volume
- 34
- No. of pages
- 12
- ISSN
- 1292-8941
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2011-11052-5
- Publication date
- 2011
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 1030 Physics, Astronomy
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/e559af94-e602-4b1d-b85a-09cb208efe34