Self-assembly of polymer-linked nanoparticles and scaling behavior in the assembled phase

An entropic depletion-driven phase separation is known to be observed for mixtures of polymers and nanoparticles. While polymer-linked nanoparticles have been synthesized, their phase behavior has only been predicted for chemically specific interactions. We use integral equation theory to determine the structure and phase behavior of chemically isotropic polymer-linked nanoparticles at high densities. When each end of a linear polymer is grafted to a nanoparticle, we predict an entropy-driven microphase separation of locally segregated polymer-rich and nanoparticle-rich domains. The formation of these self-assembled structures is purely a consequence of the shape of the polymer-linked particle species. The depletion-driven demixing of ungrafted polymer-nanoparticle composites (with small amounts of nanoparticles) is enhanced as particle diameter (D) grows compared to the polymer radius of gyration (R_g). However, this study shows that for polymer-linked nanoparticle systems, the transition from a liquid to microphase separated state shifts to higher densities (i.e. is inhibited) as D/R_g increases. The transition volume fractions attain a unique value (of ∼0.69) at D/R_g ∼ 1.13. The repeating length scale (L*) is 1.4-2.2 times the size of the entire species (D + R_g). Surprisingly, L*/(D + R_g) is a non-monotonic function of the polymer radius of gyration. The repeating length scale also displays a remarkable scaling behavior, as a function of the particle diameter and the polymer density. Additionally, our study implies that two different mechanisms of transitioning to the microphase separated state are possible for these systems, which has important implications for the transition density and the kinds of structures formed.