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Particles without a Box: Brush-first Synthesis of Photodegradable PEG Star Polymers under Ambient Conditions
Published on: October 10, 2013
Polydisperse star polymer solutions
von Ferber C1, Jusufi, Watzlawek
1Institut fur Theoretische Physik II, Heinrich-Heine-Universitat Dusseldorf, Universitatsstrasse 1, D-40225 Dusseldorf, Germany.
Abstract:
We analyze the effect of polydispersity in the arm number on the effective interactions, structural correlations, and phase behavior of star polymers in a good solvent. The effective interaction potential between two star polymers with different arm numbers is derived using scaling theory. The resulting expression is tested against monomer-resolved molecular dynamics simulations. We find that the theoretical pair potential is in agreement with the simulation data in a much wider polydispersity range than other proposed potentials. We then use this pair potential as an input in a many-body theory to investigate polydispersity effects on the structural correlations and the phase diagram of dense star polymer solutions. In particular, we find that a polydispersity of 10%, which is typical in experimental samples, does not significantly alter previous findings for the phase diagram of monodisperse solutions.
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