Polymer-Grafted Nanoparticles

Environmentally Friendly Synthesis of Polymer-Grafted Nanoparticles

Structure and transport properties of polymer grafted nanoparticles.

We perform molecular dynamics simulations on a bead-spring model of pure polymer grafted nanoparticles (PGNs) and of a blend of PGNs with a polymer melt to investigate the correlation between PGN design parameters (such as particle core concentration, polymer grafting density, and polymer length) and properties, such as microstructure, particle mobility, and viscous response. Constant strain-ra...

Modeling the anisotropic self-assembly of spherical polymer-grafted nanoparticles.

Recent experimental results demonstrated that polymer grafted nanoparticles in solvents display self-assembly behavior similar to the microphase separation of block copolymers and other amphiphiles. We present a mean-field theory and complementary computer simulations to shed light on the parametric underpinnings of the experimental observations. Our theory suggests that such self-assembled str...

Assembly of Nanoparticles using Surface-Grafted Orthogonal Polymer Gradients

Polymer-coated surfaces are routinely used in industrially important applications including prevention of biofouling (in fabrication of protein-resistant surfaces), improving stability of colloidal dispersions, surface lubrication, or enhancing wettability and adhesion. Polymer chains chemically bound to the surface represent a special class of polymer coatings that has gained considerable atte...

Colloidal stability of zwitterionic polymer-grafted gold nanoparticles in water.

We investigate the colloidal stability of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) coated with zwitterionic sulfobetaine polymers in aqueous solution. Zwitterionic polymers with different molar masses, synthesized by reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization of N,N'-dimethyl(methacrylamido propyl)ammonium propanesulfonate (SPP) exhibit a well known Upper Critical Solution Tempera...