Structure and dynamics of a polymer- nanoparticle solution - Laboratoire Charles Coulomb (L2C) Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2018

Structure and dynamics of a polymer- nanoparticle solution

Valerio Sorichetti

Résumé

Understanding the motion of nanoparticles in polymer solutions and melts is a problem of broad importance, with applications to many different fields, such as material science, biophysics, and medicine. If the nanoparticles are larger than the polymer's radius of gyration, their structure and dynamics can be well described in terms of effective pair potentials. However, much remains to be understood in the so-called “protein limit”, where the size of the nanoparticles becomes comparable to or smaller than that of the polymers. Moreover, most of the previous study considering this size range have only focused on the dilute nanoparticle regime, which is easier to handle since inter-nanoparticle interaction can be neglected and the properties of the polymer solution/melt are expected to be unchanged. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we study the dynamic and structural properties of a semidilute polymer solution containing well dispersed spherical nanoparticles of size smaller than the polymer's radius of gyration. We consider various nanoparticle diameters and a broad range of nanoparticle volume fractions, up to values for which the inter-nanoparticle interaction becomes important. We find that the polymers slow down when the nanoparticle concentration is increased, in qualitative agreement with the confinement parameter theory (Choi et al.,ACS Macro Lett. 2013,2,485−490), according to which polymers slow down because they have to squeeze through “bottlenecks” created by the presence of the nanoparticles. Also the nanoparticles slow down when their concentration is increased, with the magnitude of the slowing down depending in a non-trivial way on their size. Surprisingly, if the concentration of the nanoparticles is increased past the range in which the nanoparticle dispersion is good, the diffusivities of polymers and nanoparticles reach a minimum and then start to increase.
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

hal-01936923 , version 1 (27-11-2018)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-01936923 , version 1

Citer

Valerio Sorichetti. Structure and dynamics of a polymer- nanoparticle solution. Italian Soft Days 2018, Sep 2018, Padue, Italy. ⟨hal-01936923⟩
51 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More