Related papers: Theory of copolymer micellization
A recently proposed "DFT+dispersion" treatment (Rajchel et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 2010, 104, 163001) is described in detail and illustrated by more examples. The formalism derives the dispersion-free density functional theory (DFT)…
We propose a theoretical approach to quantitatively account for the role of entanglement in the nucleation of polymer melts, which is the unique feature of polymer differentiated from small molecules. By performing molecular dynamics…
Given the wide range of length scales, the analysis of polymer systems often requires coarse-graining, for which various levels of description may be possible depending on the phenomenon under consideration. Here, we provide a super-coarse…
A microscopic theory for coarse graining diblock copolymers into dumbbells of interacting soft colloidal particles has been developed, based on the solution of liquid-state integral equations. The Ornstein-Zernike equation is solved to…
The behaviour of rod-coil diblock copolymers close to a surface is discussed by using extended scaling methods. The copolymers are immersed in selective solvent such that the rods are likely to aggregate to gain energy. The rods are assumed…
The depletion theory of nanoparticles immersed in a semidilute polymer solution is reinterpreted in terms of depleted chains of polymer segments. Limitations and extensions of mean-field theory are discussed. An explicit expression for the…
Herein an alternative model to reptation to describe concentrated polymer dynamics is developed. The model assumes that the chains act as blobs that are able to diffuse past each other in a compressed state. Allowing that the local…
We investigate the cooperative effects of a single finite chain of monomers near an attractive substrate by first constructing a conformational pseudo-phase diagram based on the thermal fluctuations of energetic and structural quantities.…
There exists a generic relationship between the thermodynamics of a continuous polymer with a generic self-interaction and the two-point function of an interacting field-theory. In addition, the (2N)-point function of the resulting field…
The nature of the transition between worm-like and spherical micelles in block copolymer dispersions varies between systems. In some formulations, heating drives a transition from worms to spheres, while in other systems the same transition…
Using the notion of aggregation work, we construct a system of differential equations for the aggregation number of micelles which is a function of the parameters of micellization (parametric equations). There are explicit solutions for two…
A self-consistent-field theory (SCFT) in the grand canonical ensemble formulation is used to study transitions in a helix-coil multiblock copolymer globule. The helices are modeled as stiff rods. In addition to the established coil-globule…
We investigate the folding transition of a single diblock copolymer consisting of a semiflexible and a flexible block. We obtain a {\it Saturn-shaped} core-shell conformation in the folded state, in which the flexible block forms a core and…
In this study, we propose a theoretical framework to investigate the interactions between flexible polymer chains, specifically polyelectrolytes (PEs). By calculating the system's free energy while considering position-dependent mutual…
In this paper the percolation of monomers on a square lattice is studied as the particles interact with either repulsive or attractive energies. By means of a finite-size scaling analysis, the critical exponents and the scaling collapsing…
In this paper we consider a two-dimensional model of a copolymer consisting of a random concatenation of hydrophilic and hydrophobic monomers, immersed in a micro-emulsion of random droplets of oil and water. The copolymer interacts with…
Multiblock copolymer chains in implicit nonselective solvents are studied by Monte Carlo method which employs a parallel tempering algorithm. Chains consisting of 120 $A$ and 120 $B$ monomers, arranged in three distinct microarchitectures:…
Based on classical nucleation theory, we propose a couple of theoretical models for the nucleation of polymer crystallization, i.e. one for a single chain system (Model S) and the other for a multi-chain system (Model M). In these models,…
The elastic properties of a self-assembled bilayer membrane are studied using the self-consistent field theory, applied to a model system composed of flexible amphiphilic chains dissolved in hydrophilic polymeric solvents. Examining the…
Multiphase field models have emerged as an important computational tool for understanding biological tissue while resolving single-cell properties. While they have successfully reproduced many experimentally observed behaviors of living…