Related papers: Nano-scale brushes: How to build a smart surface c…
The density functional approach for classical associating fluids is used to explore the wetting phase diagrams for model systems consisting of water and graphite-like solid surfaces chemically modified by a small amount of grafted chain…
Planar brushes formed by end-grafted semiflexible polyampholyte chains, each chain containing equal number of positively and negatively charged monomers is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. Keeping the length of the chains…
Polymer brush layers are responsive materials that swell in contact with good solvents and their vapors. We deposit drops of an almost completely wetting volatile oil onto an oleophilic polymer brush layer and follow the response of the…
Using molecular simulations, we study the properties of a polymer brush in contact with an explicit solvent under Couette and Poiseuille flow. The solvent is comprised of chemically identical chains. We present evidence that individual,…
Polymer brushes can grow on almost any solid surface, and by design, exhibit diverse properties and functionalities, thus they have been widely used in many emerging applications in engineering, energy, and medicine. In particular, some…
Polymer brushes and grafted polymers have attracted significant interest at the intersection of polymers, interfacial chemistry, colloidal science, and nanostructuring. The confinement of high-density grafted polymers and differences in…
Charged polymer brushes are layers of surface-tethered chains. Experimental systems are frequently strongly charged. Here we calculate phase diagrams for such brushes in terms of salt concentration n_s, grafting density and polymer backbone…
A comparative dynamic Monte Carlo simulation study of polydisperse living polymer brushes, created by surface initiated living polymerization, and conventional polymer monodisperse brush, comprising linear polymer chains, grafted to a…
Heat exchangers are made of metals because of their high heat conductivity and mechanical stability. Metal surfaces are inherently hydrophilic, leading to inefficient filmwise condensation. It is still a challenge to coat these metal…
We consider edge effects in grafted polymer layers under compression. For a semi-infinite brush, the penetration depth of edge effects $\xi\propto h_0(h_0/h)^{1/2}$ is larger than the natural height $h_0$ and the actual height $h$. For a…
Particle simulations confined by sharp walls usually develop an oscillatory density profile. For some applications, most notably soft matter liquids, this behavior is often unrealistic and one expects a monotonic density climb instead. To…
A framework is developed to allow emulsification to be used to fabricate functional structures from, and study the properties of, pristine layered nanosheets. Liquid-exfoliated few-layer graphene and MoS2 are demonstrated to stablize…
We present the first analytic theory with elegant and closed-form analytical solutions to explore the cosolvency effect in polymer brushes, where polymer chains that are poorly soluble in two pure solvents become fully soluble in certain…
Polymer brushes, coatings consisting of densely grafted macromolecules, experience an intrinsic lateral compressive pressure, originating from chain elasticity and excluded volume interactions. This lateral pressure complicates a proper…
We demonstrate a novel in situ polymerization technique to develop localized polymer coatings on the surface of dispersed pristine graphene sheets. Graphene sheets show great promise as strong, conductive fillers in polymer nanocomposites;…
The structural phase behavior of polymer brushes, single-component linear homopolymers grafted onto a planar substrate, is studied using the molecular Monte Carlo method in 3 dimensions. When simulation parameters of the system are set in…
The equilibrium properties of polymer droplets on a soft deformable surface are investigated by molecular dynamics simulations of a bead-spring model. The surface consists of a polymer brush with irreversibly end-tethered linear homopolymer…
The interface properties of interest in multilayers include interfacial charge densities, dipole densities, band offsets, and screening-lengths, among others. Most such properties are inaccesible to direct measurements, but are key to…
Multifunctional coatings are central for information, biomedical, transportation and energy technologies. These coatings must possess hard-to-attain properties and be scalable, adaptable, and sustainable, which makes layer-by-layer assembly…
The influence of the external pressure and surface energy on the wetting transition at nanotextured interfaces is studied using molecular dynamics and continuum simulations. The surface roughness of the composite interface is introduced via…